My links

More than a decade ago, when I was applying to graduate school, I went through a period of deep uncertainty. I had tried the previous year and hadn’t gotten in anywhere. I wanted to try again, but I had a lot going against me. I’d spent most of my undergrad building a student job-portal startup…

80% of the people only need 20% of the features.

Yesterday, I checked out the Goodnotes app because I’m planning to buy an iPad to give note-taking on it a try again. I opened it and I saw that it has updat...

Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options.

Explore why Markdown, despite its ubiquity, might not be the best fit for technical content.

It’s so easy

I've been treading water the last months, spending (link: page://bas25qtbfyoepfvq text: too) (link: page://o9fm0f2abnibkhkc text: much) (link: page://mcskmbgfnogm2dtv text: time) on Linux computer setups and other things that clearly does not speak to my …

The more I speak about being poor, the more I realize how fundamentally other folks misunderstand what it means to be poor versus being broke.

Ever searched for a fix to a technical problem, only to get a 1,000 word essay on what the thing is? Yeah, me too.

programmer by day, programmer by night.

What I learned when I stopped trying to make life exciting

You are the sum of your behaviors not your intentions

It’s hard to make a saw that cuts trees but not arms.

Giving good career advice is hard. Maybe it’s because careers can look more alike than they really are. Two people can have the same title but what helps one...

Recently, I've been using this method to learn from long-form videos, usually dense in information where I'm just interested in some parts of it. Thanks to AI, we don't need to watch 2 hours of videos anymore to get to the content we're interested in.

These free YouTube downloaders work on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and the web. But Google hides them. Here's how websites self-censor to avoid Google's wrath.

Developer and writer.

Sometimes the people who need invitations most are the ones who always decline them.

Przemysław Alexander Kamiński · Raideur des doigts September 20th, 2025 marks exactly one year since I bought Roland’s FPX-30, 88-keys full sized digital piano. Being in my 4th decade of life I never taught myself any instrument, even though I own and dabble with many. In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head, it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that allows me to ad-hoc compose music.

I read to forget. Even when studying or working on papers for a PhD, I approach texts with the same mindset: I'm not a storage device that needs to save all ...

Consider the resale value when buying something. You move from buying things, thinking that you'll own them forever, and that the price you paid is gone, to thinking they're more in rental mode until you resell them.

I've read numerous articles about renting versus buying and most dive into financial projections while completely missing the bigger picture.

Bad news: your internal identity dictates everything you do. Good news: you can change it

Why tech interviews reward complexity while real engineering demands simplicity. You have to put on your mask, get the job, then you can finally remove the mask and do the actual job.

Article discussing the push for passkeys as an alternative to passwords, including numerous problems associated with passkeys like big companies agenda, complicated proprietary implementations, vendor lock-in requirements and dependency on smartphones, dubious value for ordinary users, and misplaced purpose and value, hype and security, lax IT practices and constant private data leaks, psychological reasons why modern Web and email are interactive and phishing-prone due to profit-driven design, wrongness of clickable links, practice of information-only communication, severe implications for privacy and freedom in so-called modern solutions, some other observations, and more

Designer, Developer and digital minimalist. Always searching for less complexity.

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

<marks>Adverting sucks.</mark> It's insidious, pervasive and outright malicious. [So, block ads.](/posts/2023/i-block-ads)

if you are burnt out from replacing the software, hosters, tools you use every few weeks and keep deleting and remaking, this might be for you

“What if I actually have already achieved everything I’m going to achieve in my life,” Dan Mall asks. “What does it feel like to live like someone where everything new is a bonus, not a desire...

A little over a decade ago, Paul Graham popularized “Do things that don’t scale.” The idea was: at first, you do the scrappy, personal, labor-intensive stuff just to get traction… and then you figure…

hiring in tech is broken and everyone knows it. what can we do better?

A clover, a bee, and a break

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

A home for Jihad Esmail.

Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save

Many teams start with the MVP. But what if the key to shipping great products wasn’t starting small — but starting big? Could great products start at the finish line?

Strategies and tactics for staying productive.

Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate on simple tasks? I finally cracked the code using thermal receipt printer and game design.

This handbook represents the best of our collective knowledge on management and serves as the foundation of our internal training program here at Clearbit.

Today, I would like to talk about a common challenge that many designers face — creating and updating design portfolio. Portfolio is essential thing that presents your work to potential employers…

A reflection on control, burnout, and the strange weight of technical fluency.

One of many stories about a tech market undergoing transformation. (If you’re out there on the market, don’t lose sight of your strengths. You are awesome.)

How I built a web archive by hand, the tradeoffs between manual and automated archiving, and what I learnt about preserving the web.

Build a private, self-hosted, and extensible productivity notes-taking system using Directus and Docker - inspired by Obsidian and single-file workflows

Tired of migrating notes apps like Obsidian or Evernote? Learn how to build your own private, long-term PKM using self-hosted Directus for control & longevity.

Learn how to setup your MacBook faster with Brewfiles and macOS defaults.

tools, tactics, troubles along the way

Stuck in lock down with time on my hands and an itch to work on something new, I picked back up a side project I started about a decade ago, to build a better resume for developers.

As Highline Solutions turns six, I just wanted to step back and write a bit about what we've built, our mission, and the values we've formed on our journey.

On-call in big tech is bad, found out why.

We might be seeing the end of remote coding interviews as we know them, and a return of in-person interviews, trial days and longer trial periods. Could hiring be returning to pre-pandemic norms?

software used to be functional. now it’s personal. this is an essay about tools, taste, and the quiet ways we curate identity through what we launch.

Notes on a revolution in slow motion.

A collection of things I've learned over my decade in the industry, on how and where to look for jobs, applying, interviewing, talking about yourself and your work, and all those other fun things. For whatever it's worth.

One of life's greatest simple pleasures is creating something just for yourself.

A guide to basic digital hygiene.

After twenty or so years as a software developer, mostly in consulting, I felt like I could handle myself in even the most tenuous situations. As an independent, it instantly felt different.

As a full-time employee, I used to loathe bullshit. But after going independent, I learned there's a flip-side to it.

A simple rule that every good, veteran programmer seems to follow with respect to managing their time.

Charity Majors of Honeycomb.io debunks the "10x engineer" myth, emphasizing team productivity and building inclusive, high-performing engineering teams.

We like lists because they are an objectively good way to organize information. They allow readers to quickly and easily get what they want.

(or at least work better)

My personal framework for reading research papers.

I prefer scripts to real aliases when defining a custom command.

Le Wagon forme des développeurs web et des data scientist à travers des formations intensives (bootcamps) de 2 ou 6 mois, à temps plein ou partiel. Depuis 2013, cette école a déjà formé plus de 11 000 étudiants. Présente dans 44 villes et 25 pays, elle a choisi Notion pour s’adapter à son organisation très horizontale. Le premier objectif était de mettre à disposition de tous ses campus des guides opérationnels. Mais l’outil n’a pas tardé à s’imposer pour le partage des connaissances et la collaboration des équipes.

In an ironic twist, I'd started writing this year in review at beginning of December. It's been a bit of a wild ride since then with the COVID Omicron variant.

If you ask a room full of software engineers what they think about recruiters, there are a number of themes that arise. There are jokes about how overwhelming the experience is, the volume of…

It's been said many times that to have lots of good ideas, we need to have lots of bad ones, too. We need lots of ideas, period. What people often skip over when talking about producing ideas is the effort and skill required to filter out the bad ones and...

In March 2011, I drafted an article explaining how the team responsible for Google Chrome ships software. Then I promptly forgot about it. I stumbled across the draft a few days ago. Though it is now…

Cal Newport writes about how organizations can beat back the scourge of overwork and the stress that goes hand in hand with it, particularly while many workers are remote during the coronavirus pandemic.

Cela fait plus de deux ans que je travaille chez beta.gouv.fr, où un collectif de plus de 250 personnes passionnées par le service public (agents publics, dé...

L'entrée dans le monde de la tech s'ouvre de plus en plus aux femmes. Mais quid de la suite ? Comment sont-elles considérées &nbsp;lorsqu'elles sont effectivement devenues développeuses ou data scientists ? Quels dispositifs peuvent être imaginés pour les aider à rester dans ce milieu alors que les femmes ont significativement plus de risques d'abandonner leur carrière technique que leurs homologues masculins ?&nbsp;Elisabeth Fainstein, Coach Développeuse pour le programme Entrepreneurs d'intérêt général et fondatrice d'electronictales.io fait le tour de quelques initiatives émergentes – du monde associatif aux grands groupes, en passant par les start-ups et le secteur public –, afin d'examiner les effets de celles-ci et de rêver aux solutions de demain.

Bonjour et bienvenue à vous qui consultez ces quelques mots. Aujourd’hui, j’ai décidé de prendre ma plume et de vous emmener avec moi dans une réflexion qui m’intéresse depuis maintenant un certain …

Putting Thoughts on Trial is a CBT activity focused on the examination of irrational thoughts. Your client will act as a defense attorney, prosecutor,...

Long story short: I’ve taken a new position in Luxembourg and I have tofind an apartment, in a different country, in a reasonably short time.

I was kinda preparing to roll my eyes at this, but it's pretty good! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XctnF7C74s What I like are the actual examples, even if they are made generic. Definitely prefer seeing good/bad examples rather than just stating a tip without backing it up with an example. This is a good line: Therein lies the beauty…

When my digital todo lists became overwhelming, I designed a minimalist system that fits in my MagSafe wallet.

John Oliver dedicated the primary segment of his most recent episode on Meta and it's many moderation and privacy failures and violations. It was a well-reasoned take if not a redundant one for everyone who's spent time following these issues. What I found most compelling was his guidance to —...

We are told that technology is on the brink of ruining everything. But we are being lied to, and the truth is so much better. Marc Andreessen presents his techno-optimist vision for the future.

A practical, science-backed model for growing quality professional relationships.

Rethinking the balance between coding passion, life, and maintaining healthy boundaries.

The personal site of designer Naz Hamid.

I've been creating small, hand-written websites to organise my files. It's a lightweight, flexible approach that I hope will last a long time.

Personalisation sells, but good design satisfies. Don't wait for perfect execution. Ship and iterate. You don't need to fill your time. Creating calendar white …

Meta's apps have almost 3 billion daily users. It's scooped up unknown numbers of email addresses and phone numbers for people who never signed up.

The new/old way of keeping a digital journal

You’re someone who’s got dreams. If I ask you what a life lived to the fullest looks like, you imagine things like traveling the world, falling in love, or starting a company...

A higher quality discussion emerged among commenters allowed to use personas instead of their real names.