10 ms·

Best things and stuff of 2015

451 points by platz 11y ago

wcarss 11y ago
This has become one of the few end-of-year wrap-ups that I actively look forward to seeing, both as inspiration to read more and as a source for interesting ideas. As usual, this is an amazing trove of interesting links and top notch personal accounting. Thank you, fogus!
- mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I agree. Last year I ended up spending lots of time following Michael's tracks.
twoquestions 11y ago
Wow, how does somebody get all that reading/working done in a year?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- malexw 11y ago
  I'd love to know that too. His goodreads profile shows 107 books read this year, so about 2 per week. I think my personal best (since I started tracking) was 12 in a year.
  - panglott 11y ago
    My average for the last four years (since I started tracking) is 43.5. I think reading 100/year would require reading books instead of watching TV nearly every night. Here's confessions of someone who read 164: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10634416/reading-list-books http://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10634416/reading-list-books Blogger/economist Tyler Cowan also advises quitting books that are a slog.
    - joshyeager 11y ago
      You are correct, you have to make time for reading by reducing other entertainment time. I hit 100 books last year without too much trouble, but I've really struggled with my goal of 125 this year (123 now, and two days left). 2 books per week was an amount that makes me happy, so I kept up with it easily. I fell behind early this year because my wife and I wanted to catch up on a couple of TV shows, which meant I needed to average over 2.5 books per week. That was enough to kill part of the fun, which is why I've struggled. A goal is great because it helps you get started on the next book when you might want to do something easier. But if it's too big it just makes reading a chore.
    - fogus 11y ago
      > I think reading 100/year would require > reading books instead of watching TV nearly > every night. That's about right. I spend about 2-hours per week on television (depending on the season I spend zero) and I haven't played a video game in 5 years. There have been many times that I've wanted to see certain shows (Supergirl looked fun) but when the time comes reading wins out almost every time. I can only read this much because I love reading more than any other form of entertainment. It would be impossible otherwise. It does kinda stink to never be able to engage in conversations about games and shows though. Maybe there's a market for semi-annual books about current media. ;)
  - misiti3780 11y ago
    I read about 70 books this year, 99% non-fiction - I try to read one hour before work and then devote as much time as I can at night before bed. It is very true that the more you read, the faster and better you get at it. I always read more than one book at one time - and I read only things I find interesting. I find fiction very uninteresting and that is why I do not read it, even though a lot of people give me shit for it.
- wcarss 11y ago
  He's actually got two posts about it, that I've found to be insightful and useful to take back to my own reading: http://blog.fogus.me/2012/02/22/reading/ http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/23/extreme-reading/ I've always been a horribly slow reader, despite enjoying reading and reading at a high level. A lot of that slowness is actually about the time I devote to reading (toilet time and bed time, essentially), the level of interest I have in the material (usually "enough to continue"), and a symptom of my out-of-practice reading skill, which leads to me primarily subvocalizing instead of reading, and frequently backtracking. Spending 10-15 minutes every other day reading at 200 words per minute does not make for a quick journey through a book. After thinking of it in those terms, I've started to apply the idea that the more I read, the faster I will read (up to a point), to actively avoid subvocalization, and to devote real blocks of time to reading instead of fitting it in at the edges. I find that I end up reading closer to 400 wpm during focused time, and when I want to, I'm able to average 1-2 hours/day of a week. Spending that much time at 400ish words per minute makes books fly past. Keeping comprehension up and realizing value is where taking some notes comes into it. Beyond that, as he says, you have to know what you're reading a book for. For example, it's probably not worth reading the introduction and basic content chapters of technical books you're already up-to-speed on, and you can skip right to the important parts and just read them deeply.
  - dilap 11y ago
    reading w/o subvocalization as a goal seems really weird to me! i feel like for stuff like novels the vocalization & imagined richness of the world is kind of part of the point, and for technical material, grasping the ideas is by far going to be the limiting factor. (e.g., easy to spend an hour on 1 page of a math text.)
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      I didn't even realize people subvocalized when reading until recently, when a friend mentioned it off-hand. It's really hard to analyze - if I think about it, I start doing it - but I'm pretty sure I don't subvocalize when I read at all.
- zeroonetwothree 11y ago
  I "read" >100/yr audiobooks just in extra time commuting, doing chores, etc.
bostonpete 11y ago
He's done all that reading and still hasn't read Snow Crash? What the what...? Edit: It's been on his "Still Haven't Read" list since 2010. Maybe it's some sort of inside joke at this point...
- bigtunacan 11y ago
  That one has been on my "Still Haven't Read" list for quite some time; finally read it this year and it's great. For me anything fictional gets pushed so far to the bottom of the list compared to everything else that's on my to read list that I have had books sitting on shelves for 10+ years just waiting to eventually get read.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    > For me anything fictional gets pushed so far to the bottom of the list compared to everything else that's on my to read list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon I thought it was more fun than Snow Crash.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - himlion 11y ago
      Did you try Anathem? I enjoyed Cryptonomicon as well but I think Anathen was even better, especially for techies.
- ghthor 11y ago
  I started it and got about 1/2 a chapter in. Haven't picked it back up, dunno why really, I was enjoying it a little.
  - therealdrag0 11y ago
    Same. I liked the jokes, and then got bored of it by 30% in.
elliotec 11y ago
Fogus is the man.
sandGorgon 11y ago
Deja vu. I wonder how he came across one of the really old works of Zakir Hussain. One of the greatest percussionists of Indian classical music of all time.
- himanshuy 11y ago
  I was a big fan of Zakir Hussain back in the days. He was an inspiring celebrity for us in India.
  - pcsanwald 11y ago
    for us music geeks in the US, too! Shakti, particularly the first album, was a great gateway for me in getting into Indian music.
- swatkat 11y ago
  Slightly off topic: Zakir Hussain is a household name in India, especially back in the 80s/90s, due to very popular TV commercial of a tea brand[1][2] :) [1] http://www.tajmahaltea.com/taj-story/our-history.aspx http://www.tajmahaltea.com/taj-story/our-history.aspx [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vV92WYS2Mk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vV92WYS2Mk
- winkywooster 11y ago
  I saw him in Boulder recently, playing with a Celtic band. Very impressive. There was an interview of him recently on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2015/01/08/375637915/the-tabla-master-who-jammed-with-the-grateful-dead http://www.npr.org/2015/01/08/375637915/the-tabla-master-who...
- fogus 11y ago
  I'm almost certain that I've heard his music before, but this was the first year that I actively listened if you catch my meaning.
  - kasbah 11y ago
    Check out his collaboration called Sangam, with Charles Lloyd and Eric Harland, if you are into Jazz. There is an excellent video recording on Youtube as well as a CD (which is quite different and worth checking out separately). https://youtu.be/0-OSqHAeLBU?t=1m41s https://youtu.be/0-OSqHAeLBU?t=1m41s
tamana 11y ago
I guess web caching is not one of the best things of 2015. Site is down.
kbenson 11y ago
Crap, I still have a tab open in my browser at home for the best things and stuff of 2013[1] that I haven't made it though, and I first opened it when it was posted in late 2013! I really need to devote some time to that, since I've bothered to make sure that tab survived for two years. 1: http://blog.fogus.me/2013/12/27/the-best-things-and-stuff-of-2013/ http://blog.fogus.me/2013/12/27/the-best-things-and-stuff-of...
- neopallium 11y ago
  You haven't had to reboot your home computer for 2 years? Nice!
  - henrik_w 11y ago
    In Chrome (probably the others too) you can set it to keep the open tabs open across restarts.
- brianclements 11y ago
  I used to do that and it started to really stress me out! Get into Pocket or Workflowy or something else to sort those for later!
  - mkobit 11y ago
    I started using Pocket a few months ago and really enjoy it. The offline reading is great for public transit, and it gives me a good backlog of articles that I want to read. I do find it hard to keep my rate of finished/incoming above 1 with all the other things I try to make some time for!
    - brianclements 11y ago
      Oh my finished/incoming ratio is disgusting. I imagine that if it was important to save at one point, it will remain important in the future when I figure out a way to pipe them all into some AI summarizer and it can teach it to me. I've been collecting for a number of years now, and interestingly, when I sort oldest to newest, I have a really interesting window into what I thought was important/newsworthy at that time and what I know to be important/newsworthy or timeless now. I wonder if I can use that information to help sharpen my own judgment?
pjbriggs 11y ago
This is a pleasure to see I had read the last two years but i think this is the one that will make me actively remember it in coming years.
SeanDav 11y ago
Good to see LoseThos there. An interesting story about an interesting guy - and also a great programmer.
aresant 11y ago
Just discovered "Kiwi Crates" via this post. As parent to a 4 and 3 year old = incredible find. Love the blend of simplicity (delivered w/everything) and still meaningful construction. Anything else like this parents of HN can share?
- icc97 11y ago
  I found it a nice touch that they'd included 'Art' to turn the rather uninspiring (in my head anyway) 'STEM' into a rather more inspiring 'STEAM'.
  - theoh 11y ago
    I think this idea came from RISD. If you have ever sat in college level classes in both the hard sciences and visual arts, the difference in the capabilities of the students (and of the teachers) is very marked. It's not that one set of abilities is better than the other, just a case of two self-selected groups. Even in a mixed field like architecture the focus is on formal (aesthetic) issues rather than rigorous conceptual/deductive thinking. In fact "critical" reasoning is just barely on the agenda and is learned and applied in an ad hoc way. Maybe a figure like Gaudi came close to being the ideal STEAM all-rounder. Whether we need more of his type I don't know!
  - gohrt 11y ago
    Even better: METALS: Math Engineering Technology Art Language Science at which point we're back to "education is good" and we've cancelled the whole point of the STEM concept in the first place.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    Even better: METALS: Math Engineering Technology Art Language Science at which point we're back to "education is good" and we've cancelled the whole point of the STEM concept in the first place.
- imperialWicket 11y ago
  Kiwi Crates (and Koala - haven't tired the older age targeting boxes) are excellent, our 4 and 5 year olds love them. The results don't have a lot of longevity, at least for the Kiwi crates, but they consume an afternoon+ and involve a lot of productive-feeling efforts. I have been thinking about genius box, the young scientist club, explorabox, and agent ribbit, too. There is so much overlap in a lot of these that it's difficult to commit to multiple without just ending up with duplicates. That probably wouldn't be entirely bad, but it's mildly annoying. Also, not all of these get down to the 3-4 yr range, but maybe something to think about in the context of the impending TinkerCrate subscription. http://www.geniusbox.me/ http://www.geniusbox.me/ http://theyoungscientistsclub.com/ http://theyoungscientistsclub.com/ http://www.explorabox.org/ http://www.explorabox.org/ http://agentribbit.com/ http://agentribbit.com/
zeeshanm 11y ago
According to this post - the author's read at least two books per week in 2015. How does one do that? Serious question.
- fogus 11y ago
  Instead of watching TV, playing video games, surfing Facebook, and solving Sudoku puzzles I read. There's really nothing else to it.
  - jseliger 11y ago
    Instead of watching TV, playing video games, surfing Facebook, and solving Sudoku puzzles I read. There's really nothing else to it. I'm the same way. Friends and students are endlessly amazed that I'm reading a new book every couple days. I'm endlessly amazed at how much time they spend on their phones. A while ago I wrote "Why fiction? Why reading?" http://jakeseliger.com/2014/03/03/why-fiction-why-reading/ http://jakeseliger.com/2014/03/03/why-fiction-why-reading/ : Every great book is the result of years or decades of studying and experience, distilled into a volume you can read in a few hours. How could you not want that?
- Marcus316 11y ago
  I suspect it really depends on the person. Two books a week doesn't seem all that difficult _for me_ ... but my wife would have a lot of trouble with it, though she makes up for that by reading for longer periods of time than I do. I enjoy reading to a ridiculous degree and do so quite often. As a result, I can typically finish a 400-page book in 2-3 days, averaging a couple hours each day. I'm at the faster end of the scale among people I know, though. A free weekend (which is extremely rare with two young kids) usually gives me the time to finish 3 or 4 books on my ever-growing list of fiction to read.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  Replace HN/Facebook/Reddit time with reading.
- rimantas 11y ago
  It takes me less than 30 seconds to read the page. Let's be generous and make it 60 seconds. So in an hour you can read 60 pages. 300 pages book in five hours. Two books will take 10 hours. So reading for one hour each week day and 2.5 on weekend will take you through two books a week. There are books however which you just cannot put down and go through them in one or two sittings.
Idontagree 11y ago
I really gotta ask what's w/ snow crash this year? Did it get mentioned somewhere, I've just seen it a bunch from my family, now here; but I read it like 15 years ago. Is it because of Seveneves?
- Hortinstein 11y ago
  I think the reemergence of Virtual Reality (oculus/vive) has a lot to do with it
sotojuan 11y ago
For discovering music I recommend Rate Your Music. You don't need an account, just go to the "charts" page and you can search by any genre (really, any!), country of artist or reviewers, by top rating or "esoteric" rating, etc. The site is also getting an overhaul with a new name in April which will have even more powerful searches.
- amelius 11y ago
  Link?
  - sotojuan 11y ago
    If you meant a link to information about the new site, go here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sonemic-cinemos-glitchwave https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sonemic-cinemos-glitchwav... If you meant the place where you find music in RYM, here: https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart I would say that another good place to find music is user lists. For example, here's one of non-Anglo pre-WWII music: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/uaxuctum/pre_ww2_music_from_outside_the_anglosphere/ http://rateyourmusic.com/list/uaxuctum/pre_ww2_music_from_ou...
- alexisnorman 11y ago
  This has been by favorite way of researching new music for quite a while. I'll usually start with an album I really enjoy and then read reviews or checkout lists with that album included to find similar (and sometimes totally different!) albums and artists. I know a lot of people who praise discogs.com but RYM deserves way more credit.
  - sotojuan 11y ago
    Yep. RYM has over ten years of user contributions. It's a disgusting mess of PHP with no API, but it works. The new rewrite will have an API, though I am not sure what the stack will be.
melted 11y ago
There's no way anyone can actually work and read 2 books per week. I call bullshit on this one.
- isaacdl 11y ago
  Some people read faster than others. I work full time as an engineer (~45-50 hours) and read 2-3 books a week.
- rwmj 11y ago
  Rubbish. I had a period when I read one book every day, including reading The Dice Man (which is a huge book) in one day. Of course I did little else. But 2 books a week is easily achievable.
  - Pyxl101 11y ago
    The poster said "and work every day", while you're saying "of course I did little else", so I don't think it's rubbish.
- joshdick 11y ago
  You can read a lot more than you'd think. Ryan Holiday had a great post about this very topic: http://ryanholiday.net/how-to-read-more-a-lot-more/ http://ryanholiday.net/how-to-read-more-a-lot-more/
- fogus 11y ago
  You can call it whatever you want, but it's still truth. Many people do things that you can't imagine I suspect.
awjr 11y ago
There was one blog post that had the most profound impact on my development approach for Single Page Apps. http://www.pocketjavascript.com/blog/2015/11/23/introducing-pokedex-org http://www.pocketjavascript.com/blog/2015/11/23/introducing-... Discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619933 I find it to be the one article I can link to people that has a profound impact on the way they think about web app development.
polskibus 11y ago
Hi fh
agumonkey 11y ago
The 2014 and 2015 paragraphs are the most intersting to me. The effort toward productivity, the 100:10:1 rule. Pretty good stuff.
Animats 11y ago
His choice of a social analysis of Thomas the Tank Engine is disappointing. Slate covered this in 2011, and was far better.[1] Sodor has the morals and ethics of Imperial Britain. It's all about duty. Duty to one's social superiors. There are even posters, "Sir Topham Hatt says Have you Been Really Useful Today?" Think of this as you stare at your cube walls. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/07/thomas_the_imperialist_tank_engine.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/07/thomas...

451 points by platz 11y ago

This has become one of the few end-of-year wrap-ups that I actively look forward to seeing, both as inspiration to read more and as a source for interesting ideas. As usual, this is an amazing trove of interesting links and top notch personal accounting. Thank you, fogus!

mark_l_watson 11y ago
I agree. Last year I ended up spending lots of time following Michael's tracks.

twoquestions 11y ago

Wow, how does somebody get all that reading/working done in a year?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
malexw 11y ago
I'd love to know that too. His goodreads profile shows 107 books read this year, so about 2 per week. I think my personal best (since I started tracking) was 12 in a year.
- panglott 11y ago
  My average for the last four years (since I started tracking) is 43.5. I think reading 100/year would require reading books instead of watching TV nearly every night. Here's confessions of someone who read 164: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10634416/reading-list-books http://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10634416/reading-list-books Blogger/economist Tyler Cowan also advises quitting books that are a slog.
  - joshyeager 11y ago
    You are correct, you have to make time for reading by reducing other entertainment time. I hit 100 books last year without too much trouble, but I've really struggled with my goal of 125 this year (123 now, and two days left). 2 books per week was an amount that makes me happy, so I kept up with it easily. I fell behind early this year because my wife and I wanted to catch up on a couple of TV shows, which meant I needed to average over 2.5 books per week. That was enough to kill part of the fun, which is why I've struggled. A goal is great because it helps you get started on the next book when you might want to do something easier. But if it's too big it just makes reading a chore.
  - fogus 11y ago
    > I think reading 100/year would require > reading books instead of watching TV nearly > every night. That's about right. I spend about 2-hours per week on television (depending on the season I spend zero) and I haven't played a video game in 5 years. There have been many times that I've wanted to see certain shows (Supergirl looked fun) but when the time comes reading wins out almost every time. I can only read this much because I love reading more than any other form of entertainment. It would be impossible otherwise. It does kinda stink to never be able to engage in conversations about games and shows though. Maybe there's a market for semi-annual books about current media. ;)
- misiti3780 11y ago
  I read about 70 books this year, 99% non-fiction - I try to read one hour before work and then devote as much time as I can at night before bed. It is very true that the more you read, the faster and better you get at it. I always read more than one book at one time - and I read only things I find interesting. I find fiction very uninteresting and that is why I do not read it, even though a lot of people give me shit for it.
wcarss 11y ago
He's actually got two posts about it, that I've found to be insightful and useful to take back to my own reading: http://blog.fogus.me/2012/02/22/reading/ http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/23/extreme-reading/ I've always been a horribly slow reader, despite enjoying reading and reading at a high level. A lot of that slowness is actually about the time I devote to reading (toilet time and bed time, essentially), the level of interest I have in the material (usually "enough to continue"), and a symptom of my out-of-practice reading skill, which leads to me primarily subvocalizing instead of reading, and frequently backtracking. Spending 10-15 minutes every other day reading at 200 words per minute does not make for a quick journey through a book. After thinking of it in those terms, I've started to apply the idea that the more I read, the faster I will read (up to a point), to actively avoid subvocalization, and to devote real blocks of time to reading instead of fitting it in at the edges. I find that I end up reading closer to 400 wpm during focused time, and when I want to, I'm able to average 1-2 hours/day of a week. Spending that much time at 400ish words per minute makes books fly past. Keeping comprehension up and realizing value is where taking some notes comes into it. Beyond that, as he says, you have to know what you're reading a book for. For example, it's probably not worth reading the introduction and basic content chapters of technical books you're already up-to-speed on, and you can skip right to the important parts and just read them deeply.
- dilap 11y ago
  reading w/o subvocalization as a goal seems really weird to me! i feel like for stuff like novels the vocalization & imagined richness of the world is kind of part of the point, and for technical material, grasping the ideas is by far going to be the limiting factor. (e.g., easy to spend an hour on 1 page of a math text.)
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    I didn't even realize people subvocalized when reading until recently, when a friend mentioned it off-hand. It's really hard to analyze - if I think about it, I start doing it - but I'm pretty sure I don't subvocalize when I read at all.
zeroonetwothree 11y ago
I "read" >100/yr audiobooks just in extra time commuting, doing chores, etc.

bostonpete 11y ago

He's done all that reading and still hasn't read Snow Crash? What the what...? Edit: It's been on his "Still Haven't Read" list since 2010. Maybe it's some sort of inside joke at this point...

bigtunacan 11y ago
That one has been on my "Still Haven't Read" list for quite some time; finally read it this year and it's great. For me anything fictional gets pushed so far to the bottom of the list compared to everything else that's on my to read list that I have had books sitting on shelves for 10+ years just waiting to eventually get read.
- ethbro 11y ago
  > For me anything fictional gets pushed so far to the bottom of the list compared to everything else that's on my to read list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon I thought it was more fun than Snow Crash.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - himlion 11y ago
    Did you try Anathem? I enjoyed Cryptonomicon as well but I think Anathen was even better, especially for techies.
ghthor 11y ago
I started it and got about 1/2 a chapter in. Haven't picked it back up, dunno why really, I was enjoying it a little.
- therealdrag0 11y ago
  Same. I liked the jokes, and then got bored of it by 30% in.

elliotec 11y ago

Fogus is the man.

sandGorgon 11y ago

Deja vu. I wonder how he came across one of the really old works of Zakir Hussain. One of the greatest percussionists of Indian classical music of all time.

himanshuy 11y ago
I was a big fan of Zakir Hussain back in the days. He was an inspiring celebrity for us in India.
- pcsanwald 11y ago
  for us music geeks in the US, too! Shakti, particularly the first album, was a great gateway for me in getting into Indian music.
swatkat 11y ago
Slightly off topic: Zakir Hussain is a household name in India, especially back in the 80s/90s, due to very popular TV commercial of a tea brand[1][2] :) [1] http://www.tajmahaltea.com/taj-story/our-history.aspx http://www.tajmahaltea.com/taj-story/our-history.aspx [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vV92WYS2Mk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vV92WYS2Mk
winkywooster 11y ago
I saw him in Boulder recently, playing with a Celtic band. Very impressive. There was an interview of him recently on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2015/01/08/375637915/the-tabla-master-who-jammed-with-the-grateful-dead http://www.npr.org/2015/01/08/375637915/the-tabla-master-who...
fogus 11y ago
I'm almost certain that I've heard his music before, but this was the first year that I actively listened if you catch my meaning.
- kasbah 11y ago
  Check out his collaboration called Sangam, with Charles Lloyd and Eric Harland, if you are into Jazz. There is an excellent video recording on Youtube as well as a CD (which is quite different and worth checking out separately). https://youtu.be/0-OSqHAeLBU?t=1m41s https://youtu.be/0-OSqHAeLBU?t=1m41s

tamana 11y ago

I guess web caching is not one of the best things of 2015. Site is down.

kbenson 11y ago

Crap, I still have a tab open in my browser at home for the best things and stuff of 2013[1] that I haven't made it though, and I first opened it when it was posted in late 2013! I really need to devote some time to that, since I've bothered to make sure that tab survived for two years. 1: http://blog.fogus.me/2013/12/27/the-best-things-and-stuff-of-2013/ http://blog.fogus.me/2013/12/27/the-best-things-and-stuff-of...

neopallium 11y ago
You haven't had to reboot your home computer for 2 years? Nice!
- henrik_w 11y ago
  In Chrome (probably the others too) you can set it to keep the open tabs open across restarts.
brianclements 11y ago
I used to do that and it started to really stress me out! Get into Pocket or Workflowy or something else to sort those for later!
- mkobit 11y ago
  I started using Pocket a few months ago and really enjoy it. The offline reading is great for public transit, and it gives me a good backlog of articles that I want to read. I do find it hard to keep my rate of finished/incoming above 1 with all the other things I try to make some time for!
  - brianclements 11y ago
    Oh my finished/incoming ratio is disgusting. I imagine that if it was important to save at one point, it will remain important in the future when I figure out a way to pipe them all into some AI summarizer and it can teach it to me. I've been collecting for a number of years now, and interestingly, when I sort oldest to newest, I have a really interesting window into what I thought was important/newsworthy at that time and what I know to be important/newsworthy or timeless now. I wonder if I can use that information to help sharpen my own judgment?

pjbriggs 11y ago

This is a pleasure to see I had read the last two years but i think this is the one that will make me actively remember it in coming years.

SeanDav 11y ago

Good to see LoseThos there. An interesting story about an interesting guy - and also a great programmer.

aresant 11y ago

Just discovered "Kiwi Crates" via this post. As parent to a 4 and 3 year old = incredible find. Love the blend of simplicity (delivered w/everything) and still meaningful construction. Anything else like this parents of HN can share?

icc97 11y ago
I found it a nice touch that they'd included 'Art' to turn the rather uninspiring (in my head anyway) 'STEM' into a rather more inspiring 'STEAM'.
- theoh 11y ago
  I think this idea came from RISD. If you have ever sat in college level classes in both the hard sciences and visual arts, the difference in the capabilities of the students (and of the teachers) is very marked. It's not that one set of abilities is better than the other, just a case of two self-selected groups. Even in a mixed field like architecture the focus is on formal (aesthetic) issues rather than rigorous conceptual/deductive thinking. In fact "critical" reasoning is just barely on the agenda and is learned and applied in an ad hoc way. Maybe a figure like Gaudi came close to being the ideal STEAM all-rounder. Whether we need more of his type I don't know!
- gohrt 11y ago
  Even better: METALS: Math Engineering Technology Art Language Science at which point we're back to "education is good" and we've cancelled the whole point of the STEM concept in the first place.
- gohrt 11y ago
  Even better: METALS: Math Engineering Technology Art Language Science at which point we're back to "education is good" and we've cancelled the whole point of the STEM concept in the first place.
imperialWicket 11y ago
Kiwi Crates (and Koala - haven't tired the older age targeting boxes) are excellent, our 4 and 5 year olds love them. The results don't have a lot of longevity, at least for the Kiwi crates, but they consume an afternoon+ and involve a lot of productive-feeling efforts. I have been thinking about genius box, the young scientist club, explorabox, and agent ribbit, too. There is so much overlap in a lot of these that it's difficult to commit to multiple without just ending up with duplicates. That probably wouldn't be entirely bad, but it's mildly annoying. Also, not all of these get down to the 3-4 yr range, but maybe something to think about in the context of the impending TinkerCrate subscription. http://www.geniusbox.me/ http://www.geniusbox.me/ http://theyoungscientistsclub.com/ http://theyoungscientistsclub.com/ http://www.explorabox.org/ http://www.explorabox.org/ http://agentribbit.com/ http://agentribbit.com/

zeeshanm 11y ago

According to this post - the author's read at least two books per week in 2015. How does one do that? Serious question.

fogus 11y ago
Instead of watching TV, playing video games, surfing Facebook, and solving Sudoku puzzles I read. There's really nothing else to it.
- jseliger 11y ago
  Instead of watching TV, playing video games, surfing Facebook, and solving Sudoku puzzles I read. There's really nothing else to it. I'm the same way. Friends and students are endlessly amazed that I'm reading a new book every couple days. I'm endlessly amazed at how much time they spend on their phones. A while ago I wrote "Why fiction? Why reading?" http://jakeseliger.com/2014/03/03/why-fiction-why-reading/ http://jakeseliger.com/2014/03/03/why-fiction-why-reading/ : Every great book is the result of years or decades of studying and experience, distilled into a volume you can read in a few hours. How could you not want that?
Marcus316 11y ago
I suspect it really depends on the person. Two books a week doesn't seem all that difficult _for me_ ... but my wife would have a lot of trouble with it, though she makes up for that by reading for longer periods of time than I do. I enjoy reading to a ridiculous degree and do so quite often. As a result, I can typically finish a 400-page book in 2-3 days, averaging a couple hours each day. I'm at the faster end of the scale among people I know, though. A free weekend (which is extremely rare with two young kids) usually gives me the time to finish 3 or 4 books on my ever-growing list of fiction to read.
sotojuan 11y ago
Replace HN/Facebook/Reddit time with reading.
rimantas 11y ago
It takes me less than 30 seconds to read the page. Let's be generous and make it 60 seconds. So in an hour you can read 60 pages. 300 pages book in five hours. Two books will take 10 hours. So reading for one hour each week day and 2.5 on weekend will take you through two books a week. There are books however which you just cannot put down and go through them in one or two sittings.

Idontagree 11y ago

I really gotta ask what's w/ snow crash this year? Did it get mentioned somewhere, I've just seen it a bunch from my family, now here; but I read it like 15 years ago. Is it because of Seveneves?

Hortinstein 11y ago
I think the reemergence of Virtual Reality (oculus/vive) has a lot to do with it

sotojuan 11y ago

For discovering music I recommend Rate Your Music. You don't need an account, just go to the "charts" page and you can search by any genre (really, any!), country of artist or reviewers, by top rating or "esoteric" rating, etc. The site is also getting an overhaul with a new name in April which will have even more powerful searches.

amelius 11y ago
Link?
- sotojuan 11y ago
  If you meant a link to information about the new site, go here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sonemic-cinemos-glitchwave https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sonemic-cinemos-glitchwav... If you meant the place where you find music in RYM, here: https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart https://rateyourmusic.com/customchart I would say that another good place to find music is user lists. For example, here's one of non-Anglo pre-WWII music: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/uaxuctum/pre_ww2_music_from_outside_the_anglosphere/ http://rateyourmusic.com/list/uaxuctum/pre_ww2_music_from_ou...
alexisnorman 11y ago
This has been by favorite way of researching new music for quite a while. I'll usually start with an album I really enjoy and then read reviews or checkout lists with that album included to find similar (and sometimes totally different!) albums and artists. I know a lot of people who praise discogs.com but RYM deserves way more credit.
- sotojuan 11y ago
  Yep. RYM has over ten years of user contributions. It's a disgusting mess of PHP with no API, but it works. The new rewrite will have an API, though I am not sure what the stack will be.

melted 11y ago

There's no way anyone can actually work and read 2 books per week. I call bullshit on this one.

isaacdl 11y ago
Some people read faster than others. I work full time as an engineer (~45-50 hours) and read 2-3 books a week.
rwmj 11y ago
Rubbish. I had a period when I read one book every day, including reading The Dice Man (which is a huge book) in one day. Of course I did little else. But 2 books a week is easily achievable.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  The poster said "and work every day", while you're saying "of course I did little else", so I don't think it's rubbish.
joshdick 11y ago
You can read a lot more than you'd think. Ryan Holiday had a great post about this very topic: http://ryanholiday.net/how-to-read-more-a-lot-more/ http://ryanholiday.net/how-to-read-more-a-lot-more/
fogus 11y ago
You can call it whatever you want, but it's still truth. Many people do things that you can't imagine I suspect.

awjr 11y ago

There was one blog post that had the most profound impact on my development approach for Single Page Apps. http://www.pocketjavascript.com/blog/2015/11/23/introducing-pokedex-org http://www.pocketjavascript.com/blog/2015/11/23/introducing-... Discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619933 I find it to be the one article I can link to people that has a profound impact on the way they think about web app development.

polskibus 11y ago

Hi fh

agumonkey 11y ago

The 2014 and 2015 paragraphs are the most intersting to me. The effort toward productivity, the 100:10:1 rule. Pretty good stuff.

Animats 11y ago

His choice of a social analysis of Thomas the Tank Engine is disappointing. Slate covered this in 2011, and was far better.[1] Sodor has the morals and ethics of Imperial Britain. It's all about duty. Duty to one's social superiors. There are even posters, "Sir Topham Hatt says Have you Been Really Useful Today?" Think of this as you stare at your cube walls. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/07/thomas_the_imperialist_tank_engine.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/07/thomas...