Archive

2017

September

September 22, 2017 » Open sourcing government
September 21, 2017 » Examining my shell command history
September 9, 2017 » Apartment rental arbitrage
September 6, 2017 » Scaling meal kit distribution
September 4, 2017 » Cross app AI

August

August 31, 2017 » Amazon's real leverage
August 28, 2017 » Focus on the story
August 27, 2017 » Why live sports?
August 25, 2017 » A unified Lambda architecture
August 22, 2017 » Death of retail
August 20, 2017 » JSON to CSV
August 12, 2017 » A Snapcode in the mail
August 10, 2017 » Start with pen and paper
August 8, 2017 » Google Docs vs Confluence
August 7, 2017 » Ephemeral data

2016

December

December 31, 2016 » Favorite books of 2016
December 31, 2016 » Amazon's peer to peer marketplace
December 30, 2016 » Human-AI cooperation
December 29, 2016 » Traveling? Buy a local book
December 24, 2016 » Comparing public transit systems: New York vs London
December 17, 2016 » Programming languages and developer tools
December 13, 2016 » Automatically taking screenshots of HTML elements
December 10, 2016 » Word clouds and text similarity
December 9, 2016 » It's donation season
December 6, 2016 » Efficiency vs expressiveness
December 3, 2016 » Read the release notes

November

November 30, 2016 » Becoming a better developer
November 27, 2016 » Visualizing your AWS costs
November 19, 2016 » Joy of old code
November 18, 2016 » Comparing the web requests made by the top sites: 2014 vs 2016
November 13, 2016 » Recursive redirects with AWS Lambda
November 12, 2016 » A poor man's data pipeline
November 6, 2016 » Restricted highlighting on the Amazon Kindle

October

October 30, 2016 » The NFL abroad
October 26, 2016 » Simple data visualizations from the command line
October 23, 2016 » Preventing future DDOS attacks
October 19, 2016 » Revisiting my Twitter activity
October 13, 2016 » My new blogging setup
October 10, 2016 » Setting up secor for Kafka 0.10
October 9, 2016 » Friction and mass surveillance
October 2, 2016 » iOS wifi security recommendation
October 1, 2016 » Shaming meeting room hogs

September

September 25, 2016 » NFL Thursdays on Twitter
September 23, 2016 » A smarter Touch ID
September 18, 2016 » Automating management
September 13, 2016 » Supporting Disqus in AMP
September 10, 2016 » Comparing my top sites: 2012 vs now
September 8, 2016 » AMP migration scripts
September 5, 2016 » Visualizing fantasy football stats
September 5, 2016 » AMPifying my blog
September 1, 2016 » Violating the norms of a social network

August

August 29, 2016 » Food identification with Google's Cloud Vision
August 28, 2016 » Giving wallabag a shot
August 24, 2016 » Writing scrapers as APIs
August 21, 2016 » Downloading your Turo ride history
August 14, 2016 » Integrating poorly documented Open Source libraries
August 13, 2016 » Fantasy football stats: 2016-2017 edition
August 8, 2016 » Consumer tech leads to cyborgs
August 7, 2016 » Engineering management: Measuring the unmeasurable
August 6, 2016 » One of my favorite programs

July

July 26, 2016 » Smarter geographic ad targeting
July 22, 2016 » Double down on your brand and IP
July 17, 2016 » Coding puzzle: Word transformation through valid words
July 16, 2016 » Whatever happened to automatic login?
July 10, 2016 » A Twitter Moments fail
July 9, 2016 » Consumer protection for UX
July 4, 2016 » Maximize the potential energy of your code
July 3, 2016 » Snapchat's massive potential

June

June 26, 2016 » Low cost at small scale
June 23, 2016 » The Brave browser
June 22, 2016 » Messaging app fragmentation
June 19, 2016 » Blogging from my phone
June 18, 2016 » AWS, Stripe, and WeWork
June 12, 2016 » Analyzing my blog
June 11, 2016 » Following up on a website optimization offer
June 6, 2016 » Word clouds in R
June 5, 2016 » Blogging: The small wins

May

May 28, 2016 » Uber and self driving cars
May 22, 2016 » Analyzing IMDB data: Actors vs actresses
May 21, 2016 » Analyzing IMDB data: Step 1 - Cleaning and QA
May 15, 2016 » Experimenting with Medium
May 14, 2016 » Expiration date selection design anti pattern
May 11, 2016 » Identifying unused database tables
May 8, 2016 » Google's photo search is eerily incredible

April

April 30, 2016 » Text is king
April 27, 2016 » Avoid full body code transplants
April 23, 2016 » A Telegram blog bot
April 18, 2016 » Irrationality of the markets: Amazon up, Netflix down
April 13, 2016 » The corporate email signup design pattern
April 10, 2016 » Unintended consequences
April 7, 2016 » Generalize at n=3
April 5, 2016 » The best code is no code
April 3, 2016 » Ben Thompson's “laddering up” and building bigger moats

March

March 27, 2016 » Unbundling politics
March 26, 2016 » Political parties are product bundles
March 21, 2016 » Data analysis needs to be fun
March 20, 2016 » Passing the torch: IBM to Google
March 13, 2016 » Approach work like the gym
March 10, 2016 » The MySQL enum type
March 6, 2016 » Airbnb, Uber, and local laws
March 5, 2016 » AWS EC2 instance arbitrage

February

February 28, 2016 » Tool specialization and growing companies
February 27, 2016 » Aural information density
February 22, 2016 » Platform partnerships
February 21, 2016 » Amazon Echo
February 20, 2016 » Let's Encrypt
February 17, 2016 » The impact of self driving cars
February 15, 2016 » Design your database for flexibility
February 13, 2016 » Longer terms in government?
February 10, 2016 » Retargeting gone wrong
February 7, 2016 » Don't build a Homer

January

January 31, 2016 » Describe what your code won't do
January 29, 2016 » Unification in tech and a new Gilded Age
January 24, 2016 » The famed 10x developer
January 23, 2016 » The ownership hierarchy
January 17, 2016 » Poor, neglected Google Voice
January 12, 2016 » 2015 Stats: Part 1
January 10, 2016 » Cleanest way to read a CSV file with Python
January 9, 2016 » Have consistent development environments
January 3, 2016 » Paris versus New York City
January 1, 2016 » Lessons from 2015

2015

December

December 28, 2015 » Smartphone usage by generation
December 25, 2015 » The true cost of low quality
December 20, 2015 » Have a work “workout” plan
December 19, 2015 » Automatically generating APIs
December 15, 2015 » Know what's mission critical
December 12, 2015 » Jersey City garbage truck routes
December 7, 2015 » Optional museum fees and corporate sponsorships
December 6, 2015 » Setting up a new computer - then and now
December 2, 2015 » Think interfaces, not implementation

November

November 26, 2015 » Analyzing large networks
November 22, 2015 » Why are Netflix and Spotify so different?
November 21, 2015 » More MySQL fun
November 19, 2015 » Adhoc task management
November 12, 2015 » My old projects
November 9, 2015 » Apps on LTE, mobile web on wifi
November 8, 2015 » A company marches on its data
November 5, 2015 » Zoning Airbnb
November 1, 2015 » Good code is easy to build and deploy

October

October 29, 2015 » Some nostalgia
October 25, 2015 » Production makes fools of us all
October 21, 2015 » Jsonify.me 2.0
October 19, 2015 » Dates in the shell
October 18, 2015 » Writing code? Think about the deployment
October 15, 2015 » Adblock, publishers, and content quality
October 11, 2015 » Have a 'go to' project when learning a new programming language
October 10, 2015 » Not every big company is evil
October 4, 2015 » Is media consumption zero sum?

September

September 26, 2015 » The iPad Pro and Apple's walled garden
September 24, 2015 » Mapping the Jersey City parking zones II
September 20, 2015 » Keep on learning
September 15, 2015 » Internalizing externalities
September 13, 2015 » Workaround driven product development
September 12, 2015 » Mapping the Jersey City parking zones
September 5, 2015 » Smart OSes
September 3, 2015 » Come on Twitter

August

August 31, 2015 » Two factor authentication hell
August 29, 2015 » Game theory dining
August 23, 2015 » Learn the application architecture through AWS
August 20, 2015 » Development cycles across programming languages
August 16, 2015 » A phoneless day
August 15, 2015 » Generating vs filtering
August 12, 2015 » Reprioritizing a non priority RabbitMQ queue
August 9, 2015 » Static site search
August 3, 2015 » Debate what's necessary and no more
August 1, 2015 » It's not done until it's deployed

July

July 29, 2015 » The Go interface
July 25, 2015 » Use the database Luke
July 20, 2015 » Tunnel vision
July 19, 2015 » Excel wins
July 16, 2015 » A Bloom filter in my head
July 12, 2015 » Comparing SQL schemas
July 8, 2015 » Apple and Intel
July 6, 2015 » Zsh and Oh My Zsh

June

June 27, 2015 » Ambiguous SQL queries
June 23, 2015 » Domain specific API definitions
June 20, 2015 » Properly handling text based two factor authentication
June 19, 2015 » The Edmunds API
June 13, 2015 » Smartphone productivity
June 9, 2015 » A MySQL “GROUP BY” nuance
June 7, 2015 » Finding the optimal car to list on RelayRides

May

May 30, 2015 » Date range generation
May 26, 2015 » Dealing with a stripped screw
May 25, 2015 » Google Chrome knows what's best for me
May 22, 2015 » The decline of niche tools
May 18, 2015 » Experts, time, and quality
May 17, 2015 » Taking spontaneous notes
May 12, 2015 » Mosh trumps shoddy internet
May 9, 2015 » Driving before GPS
May 6, 2015 » Computer show fliers from the mid 1990s
May 2, 2015 » A unique solution to every problem

April

April 28, 2015 » A few days with Google Contributor
April 26, 2015 » AWS service limits
April 23, 2015 » Adding columns in PostgreSQL and Redshift
April 19, 2015 » Don't scrape into a Dropbox folder
April 12, 2015 » The uncanny valley of advertising
April 12, 2015 » Dealing with an unresponsive Google CDN
April 6, 2015 » Redshift meets Excel
April 3, 2015 » My tool setup

March

March 29, 2015 » iOS first and username claiming
March 24, 2015 » Why login after resetting your password?
March 21, 2015 » The sharing economy and human behavior
March 18, 2015 » Power of engineering standards
March 15, 2015 » Learning to spell again
March 14, 2015 » An ode to Pi
March 10, 2015 » Strongly typed, static language tools
March 8, 2015 » Computer literacy for protection and productivity

February

February 28, 2015 » Getting the most out of log4j
February 26, 2015 » Lists and localStorage
February 23, 2015 » In praise of the full stack developer
February 22, 2015 » Lessons from Node
February 16, 2015 » Smarterphones
February 13, 2015 » Learning Scala
February 7, 2015 » URL redirection app
February 1, 2015 » MySQL vs PostgreSQL sort order

January

January 29, 2015 » Migrating a simple HTTP application on AWS
January 26, 2015 » IBM's rumored layoff
January 25, 2015 » The changing fidelity of the past
January 24, 2015 » Don't trust client side data
January 18, 2015 » Fun with GitHub's map tools
January 17, 2015 » Take the first step
January 11, 2015 » 2014 stats
January 9, 2015 » Limited language codebases
January 6, 2015 » Some quick Twitter analytics analysis
January 4, 2015 » Introducing jsonify.me

2014

December

December 31, 2014 » Redirect recursion
December 29, 2014 » A new Turing test
December 26, 2014 » DevOps for the rest of us
December 20, 2014 » Passive technology and the decline of privacy
December 18, 2014 » Amazon's Fire TV Stick
December 16, 2014 » Why log me out?
December 14, 2014 » Waiting for the aha moment
December 13, 2014 » Travel to appreciate technological growth
December 9, 2014 » Piketty and the power of data
December 7, 2014 » Internetless coding
December 1, 2014 » Symptom based monitoring

November

November 24, 2014 » AWS: Always shipping
November 22, 2014 » Fab's fall from grace and the difficulty of startups
November 20, 2014 » Paying publishers without ads
November 18, 2014 » Backendless applications
November 13, 2014 » Productivity optimization
November 9, 2014 » Some simple AWS tools
November 5, 2014 » Luxury for cheap
November 1, 2014 » Tools as tools, not products

October

October 28, 2014 » Libraries
October 27, 2014 » Lessons learned teaching a MySQL class
October 26, 2014 » Spam blog comments
October 19, 2014 » My first open source contribution
October 18, 2014 » Link bait titles are a race to zero
October 12, 2014 » AWS Glacier
October 8, 2014 » Clearing my head
October 4, 2014 » XKCD movie quotes by Android
October 1, 2014 » Normalizing a CSV file using MySQL

September

September 27, 2014 » Mobile web browsing and Javelin
September 25, 2014 » Dev tools matter
September 21, 2014 » Software is good enough, why improve the hardware?
September 20, 2014 » Dealing with an RDS replication issue
September 17, 2014 » Web development bootcamps
September 16, 2014 » Top down vs bottom up coding
September 8, 2014 » Curated Twitter timelines and the tech stack
September 7, 2014 » Importance of various tech services
September 1, 2014 » API first startups

August

August 30, 2014 » Managing settings files in Django projects
August 26, 2014 » Yahoo fantasy football stats - 2014 edition
August 22, 2014 » Cofounders and their situations
August 18, 2014 » Trick your users into staying
August 17, 2014 » A MySQL class proposal
August 11, 2014 » Books are insanely cheap
August 9, 2014 » Evolution of code deployment
August 3, 2014 » Getting the most out of Lyft's 50 free rides

July

July 31, 2014 » Hiring people on Odesk
July 29, 2014 » Low quality? Start bundling!
July 27, 2014 » Ephemeral security questions
July 23, 2014 » When one door closes, another door opens
July 16, 2014 » A simple way to automate AWS deployments
July 15, 2014 » Set up HTTPS on EC2 running Nginx without ELB
July 14, 2014 » Getting low level with HTTP
July 13, 2014 » Good artists use fewer tools
July 10, 2014 » Amazon courting app developers for the Fire phone
July 9, 2014 » On Google Now
July 7, 2014 » Retrieving a Twitter user's followers and followees
July 5, 2014 » The future of databases

June

June 15, 2014 » On having my Pinterest account hacked
June 12, 2014 » An eBay design rant: timezone support
June 8, 2014 » Replacing Evernote
June 7, 2014 » Debugging a reverting database update
June 2, 2014 » Approachable data science

May

May 29, 2014 » Generate fake SQL data using JavaScript
May 24, 2014 » On Fab's latest move
May 20, 2014 » Logging in through your inbox
May 16, 2014 » Examining ssh login requests
May 15, 2014 » Coding in a VR future
May 12, 2014 » Most commonly used shell commands
May 10, 2014 » Site down? Fall back to S3
May 3, 2014 » Gap fills and cross joins in Excel
May 2, 2014 » Migrating from Linode to Digital Ocean

April

April 28, 2014 » System knowledge and human creativity
April 25, 2014 » Craigslist: the web's fertilizer
April 21, 2014 » Bulk geocoding tool
April 16, 2014 » Vertical integration and web development
April 13, 2014 » Some computer memories
April 12, 2014 » My computer experience
April 7, 2014 » Self hosted services
April 4, 2014 » PostgreSQL Fibonacci

March

March 30, 2014 » AWS is about infrastructure optionality
March 28, 2014 » Hacker lore
March 25, 2014 » Visualizing my browsing history
March 18, 2014 » Goodbye Gmail
March 16, 2014 » Fun with the Oyster books API
March 11, 2014 » Website load times: NYC vs Beijing
March 9, 2014 » Examining the requests made by the top 100 sites
March 6, 2014 » Follow the WhatsApp money
March 2, 2014 » Trained for discounts

February

February 26, 2014 » Blog posts are now tagged
February 21, 2014 » More Sierpinski fun
February 19, 2014 » Sierpinski triangle in D3
February 15, 2014 » Heuristic vs algorithmic approaches
February 13, 2014 » Foursquare as a contact book
February 10, 2014 » Using virtualenv in production
February 9, 2014 » Travel more
February 5, 2014 » Visualizing GPS data in R
February 2, 2014 » Why I manage my own blog

January

January 25, 2014 » Solving coding tests in PostgreSQL
January 23, 2014 » Developing on a remote instance
January 19, 2014 » Emotional products
January 15, 2014 » Ebook readers
January 9, 2014 » Taxi prices around the world
January 5, 2014 » Surge pricing ideas
January 4, 2014 » Visualizing RunKeeper data in R

2013

December

December 30, 2013 » 2013 blog stats
December 29, 2013 » Taxi pricing in NYC vs Mumbai
December 26, 2013 » Smartphones and literacy
December 25, 2013 » Global products
December 23, 2013 » Getting a SIM card in India
December 21, 2013 » CSV powered products
December 20, 2013 » Why Bank of America, why?
December 15, 2013 » Using the information_schema.columns table
December 9, 2013 » Why are there so many cleaning startups?
December 1, 2013 » Drowning in JavaScript

November

November 30, 2013 » Genetic programming Connect 4
November 26, 2013 » Blog analytics (blogolytics?)
November 23, 2013 » I'm joining TripleLift
November 16, 2013 » A Twitter flashback
November 15, 2013 » RDS and R
November 9, 2013 » Is Excel on a Mac intentionally hobbled?
November 7, 2013 » Security in the wake of MongoHQ
November 3, 2013 » Why I run

October

October 30, 2013 » What the SEO? Followup
October 27, 2013 » Lessons from consulting
October 23, 2013 » Some more design ranting
October 20, 2013 » What the SEO?
October 14, 2013 » But I don't have time
October 13, 2013 » My running progress
October 12, 2013 » Decline of cynicism
October 5, 2013 » Some JavaScript Tools
October 1, 2013 » Why's the iPhone 5C so expensive?

September

September 30, 2013 » Going rate for an email address
September 28, 2013 » Pricing small consulting projects
September 20, 2013 » In defense of Excel
September 17, 2013 » Programming and math
September 16, 2013 » Offering suggestions
September 11, 2013 » MoMath visit
September 6, 2013 » Want more sales? Start teaching
September 3, 2013 » Design anti pattern: footer under infinite scroll
September 2, 2013 » Startups aren't black and white

August

August 28, 2013 » Simplicity vs power in product design
August 26, 2013 » Extract info from a web page using JavaScript
August 24, 2013 » Splitting an AWS account
August 18, 2013 » On Teaching AP Computer Science
August 14, 2013 » Netflix profiles, why now?
August 11, 2013 » Rise of flat design
August 7, 2013 » Introducing Better 404
August 2, 2013 » A brief history of manufacturing

July

July 30, 2013 » Run Django under Nginx, Virtualenv and Supervisor
July 27, 2013 » The power inbox
July 22, 2013 » Security through monopoly
July 21, 2013 » Beware the data monopoly
July 17, 2013 » Scraping Yahoo fantasy football stats with Scrapy
July 13, 2013 » Marketplaces are hard
July 9, 2013 » D3 and Vega
July 7, 2013 » Meetings: to take or not to take?
July 3, 2013 » A design that's too good?
July 1, 2013 » Externalizing externalities in brick and mortar

June

June 25, 2013 » Business frameworks are actually useful
June 21, 2013 » Where are you on the sales matrix?
June 20, 2013 » Pushing moral boundaries
June 16, 2013 » Regulation and the share economy
June 12, 2013 » Constantly entertained
June 7, 2013 » Fun with Prolog: Priceonomics Puzzle
June 4, 2013 » Citibike Directions: Second Attempt
June 1, 2013 » Citibike Station to Station Directions

May

May 29, 2013 » On SEO: Authority vs Originality
May 24, 2013 » Investing in tech stocks
May 22, 2013 » Save my reading spot, damn it
May 17, 2013 » Adding attachments to django-postman
May 15, 2013 » Google's “free” Adwords credits
May 10, 2013 » Eighteen Months of Django: Part 2
May 7, 2013 » Eighteen months of Django
May 5, 2013 » Netflix, bundling, and the future of video
May 2, 2013 » Follow through on that personal welcome email

April

April 29, 2013 » Some gaming nostalgia
April 24, 2013 » Smart software; dumb hardware
April 19, 2013 » What does getting on the HN front page get you?
April 15, 2013 » Automatically add a “Follow on HN” link
April 12, 2013 » Why don't cell phones have a dialtone?
April 10, 2013 » Raspbmc
April 5, 2013 » Coke, Pepsi and Passover
April 2, 2013 » The new Gmail compose

March

March 29, 2013 » Mailbox: Is the server required?
March 26, 2013 » Welcoming the long, single webpage
March 24, 2013 » Email addresses are private?
March 20, 2013 » One art, please
March 16, 2013 » Makers Alley v2
March 12, 2013 » Mmmm... pseudo static sites
March 9, 2013 » Just do the work
March 5, 2013 » Discriminatory Pricing in the Post Office
March 1, 2013 » App Store, what took so long?

February

February 26, 2013 » Book Review: Liars and Outliers
February 25, 2013 » Account management madness
February 22, 2013 » Vacationing with Foursquare
February 21, 2013 » Tesla and privacy
February 12, 2013 » An analysis of Lincoln's words
February 8, 2013 » More thoughts on online education
February 5, 2013 » Identifying duplicate bills across states
February 1, 2013 » Improving online programming classes

January

January 29, 2013 » The Patent troll troll
January 24, 2013 » Blog updates since November
January 23, 2013 » Why aren't there more engineers in politics?
January 19, 2013 » Making sense of my Twitter archive
January 15, 2013 » What do Fab and Groupon have in common?
January 11, 2013 » Is the pen mightier than the sword in a social world?
January 9, 2013 » Web scraping like a pro
January 2, 2013 » 2013 Goals
January 1, 2013 » Year in Review 2012

2012

December

December 19, 2012 » Self hosted Instagram export
December 16, 2012 » The joy of upgrading an HD in a Macbook

November

November 29, 2012 » Entrepreneurship is not a job
November 14, 2012 » Github Migration Notes
November 13, 2012 » Hello, Github!

August

August 12, 2012 » Eating Yourself - Innovation & Cannibalization
August 5, 2012 » In Defense of Yahoo

July

July 28, 2012 » The Startup Advantage - Details, Details, Details
July 10, 2012 » Race to 0 - RIM vs IE
July 9, 2012 » Photo taken near Times Square

June

June 7, 2012 » Achieving browser autocomplete

May

May 23, 2012 » Trend of actor vs actress age differences
May 22, 2012 » Selling to the enterprise? Target the consumer
May 16, 2012 » Peter Thiel's CS183

April

April 25, 2012 » Growth of Consumer Comfort with Technology
April 12, 2012 » Draw Something Zyngafied
April 10, 2012 » Future of Startups - Small Teams, Big Profit
April 4, 2012 » On Writing

March

March 30, 2012 » Where are the event recommendation startups?
March 24, 2012 » Overcoming the Build Bias
March 21, 2012 » When is it time to leave the full time job?
March 5, 2012 » On business models - To collect or to fine?

January

January 29, 2012 » Shakespeare and Startups
January 12, 2012 » Improving the Subway User Experience

2011

December

December 30, 2011 » Screwed if you do, screwed if you don't
December 8, 2011 » GroupOn Scheduler

January

January 8, 2011 » Tech Interview Question

2010

August

August 25, 2010 » Google Giving Employees Free Adwords?

March

March 10, 2010 » More posts coming soon

2009

September

September 28, 2009 » Improving your luck

March

March 8, 2009 » Power of Twitter

January

January 23, 2009 » Enabling modules in Apache2 under Ubuntu
January 21, 2009 » What's the easiest way to be elected president?
January 20, 2009 » More posts coming up

2008

October

October 24, 2008 » On weekend voting
October 1, 2008 » Some thoughts on innovation

September

September 15, 2008 » Should we apply the EU model to the US
September 12, 2008 » Voting system proposal
September 3, 2008 » On TV commercials

June

June 19, 2008 » Advice on internet passwords
June 12, 2008 » Privacy in the digital age

May

May 30, 2008 » Interesting Perl behavior
May 28, 2008 » Don't judge words by their author
May 24, 2008 » Martha's Vineyard Lighthouse
May 21, 2008 » Welcome
May 14, 2008 » Brainteasers and interviews
May 13, 2008 » Why we may never colonize space
May 13, 2008 » Printers no longer come with cables?
May 8, 2008 » Pronunciation
May 4, 2008 » The homeless in the US
May 4, 2008 » On Microsoft walking away from Yahoo

April

April 29, 2008 » Why does EA want Take Two?
April 29, 2008 » Video games as art
April 25, 2008 » On Apple buying PA Semiconductor