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How to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do

We have an air bike in our basement. If you are unfamiliar with air bikes, they are similar to stationary bikes with foot pedals but also have handles you push and pull with your arms. It uses air resistance, so the harder you pedal and move your arms, the higher the resistance. It’s also known as an assault bike. 😬 Which is apt, because it’s a butt-kicker of a workout. I use it about once a week, more frequently in the winter when it’s too cold to run, and less often in the summer when I can

How to Motivate Yourself to Do a Thing You Don't Want to Do

We have an air bike in our basement. If you are unfamiliar with air bikes, they are similar to stationary bikes with foot pedals but also have handles you push and pull with your arms. It uses air resistance, so the harder you pedal and move your arms, the higher the resistance. It’s also known as an assault bike. 😬 Which is apt, because it’s a butt-kicker of a workout. I use it about once a week, more frequently in the winter when it’s too cold to run, and less often in the summer when I can

Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio (2024)

Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio 📻 Last week, I went on an adventure through the electromagnetic spectrum! It’s like an invisible world that always surrounds us, and allows us to do many amazing things: It’s how radio and TV are transmitted, it’s how we communicate using Wi-Fi or our phones. And there are many more things to discover there, from all over the world. In this post, I’ll show you fifty things you can find there – all you need is this simple USB dongle and an

Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio

Fifty Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio 📻 Last week, I went on an adventure through the electromagnetic spectrum! It’s like an invisible world that always surrounds us, and allows us to do many amazing things: It’s how radio and TV are transmitted, it’s how we communicate using Wi-Fi or our phones. And there are many more things to discover there, from all over the world. In this post, I’ll show you fifty things you can find there – all you need is this simple USB dongle and an

Ask HN: Good resources for DIY-ish animatronic kits for Halloween?

Does anyone know of good resources to make your own animatronic Halloween displays? I'm a software engineer, and not skilled in hardware per se. I would love to make some things together with my kids. For reference, they are 8, 10, 12 and VERY smart and they use Ubuntu as their desktop computers and can use flatpak from the command line. Not that I am bragging.... And, I would love to NOT spent $400 on just a single ridiculous junky thing from Lowes, and do that for multiple things. My budget

Withings Updates ScanWatch 2 With 35-Day Battery Life the Apple Watch Could Only Dream Of

Withings, which is best known for its smart scales and similar devices, also makes a smartwatch series, the latest of which is the ScanWatch 2. At IFA 2025, the company announced a new blue and silver version of the 42mm model. It also unveiled HealthSense 4, an AI-laden software update that leverages the tech to handle a set of new health- and sleep-tracking features. I grabbed a picture of the ScanWatch 2 while I was there, and now I get the appeal of this watch. If you’re not familiar, the S

This new Withings smartwatch can tell you when you're getting sick

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET key takeaways Withings has unveiled its Vitality Indicator. The feature can notify users ahead of illness. The feature arrives in tandem with the ScanWatch 2. Tech brands are betting big on the ability to spot health strain before symptoms arrive. The latest feature in Withings' newest smartwatch is no different. Withings' Vitality Indicator, available on its new ScanWatch 2, monitors a user's vitals, like their heart rate variabi

Withings adds predictive AI health features to the ScanWatch 2

is a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 13 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine. Withings announced at IFA 2025 today that it’s revamping the operating system of its ScanWatch 2 smartwatch. Called HealthSense 4, the update adds new algorithms for 35 health metrics as well as predictive AI-powered alerts when a user’s health changes. The ScanWatch 2 also gains two new colors and improved battery life of 35 days — a

Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself

Brioches and Knife, Eliot Hodgkin, 08/1961 1. When people talk about the value of paying attention and slowing down, they often make it sound prudish and monk-like. Attention is something we “have to protect.” And we have to “pay” attention—like a tribute. But we shouldn’t forget how interesting and overpoweringly pleasurable sustained attention can be. Slowing down makes reality vivid, strange, and hot. Let me start with the most obvious example. As anyone who has had good sex knows, susta

A Rebel Writer's First Revolt

Mother Mary Comes to Me is out September 2. Illustration: Jan Robert Dünnweller/Source Photograph: Nasir Kachroo/Getty Images Arundhati Roy identifies as a vagrant. There was a moment in 1997, right after the Delhi-based writer became the first Indian citizen to win the Booker Prize, for her best-selling debut, The God of Small Things, when the president and the prime minister claimed the whole country was proud of her. She was 36 and suddenly rich; she could have coasted on the money and prais

The newest Samsung SmartThings hub ditches Z-Wave

is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Aeotec announced its Smart Home Hub 2 at the IFA tech show this week, marking the end of an era. The hub, produced in partnership with Samsung, is the fourth generation to support the SmartThings home automation platform, and the firs

‘Alien: Earth’ Showrunner Discusses the Timing of His Mini ‘Alien’ Movie, Plus That Huge Twist

We’ve all watched Alien movies on TV, but we’ve never had a new one made for it. That’s what happened this week, though, with the latest episode of Alien: Earth. Titled “In Space, No One…”, the episode flashed back to the events aboard the USCSS Maginot, which made it crash down to Earth. Events that, as you can imagine, involved lots of killer aliens. We did an in-depth recap and breakdown of the episode at this link, so head there to read about it. But Alien: Earth showrunner Noah Hawley, who

Notes on Managing ADHD

The pleasure is in foreseeing it, not in bringing it to term. — Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions This post is about managing ADHD. It is divided into two sections: “Strategies” describes the high-level control system, “Tactics” is a list of micro-level improvements (really it should be called “stratagems”, since most are essentially about tricking yourself). Contents Strategies High-level advice, control systems. Chemistry First ADHD has a biological cause and drugs are the first-l

Topics: day list things time todo

Yorgos Lanthimos’ New Film Puts Emma Stone at the Center of an Alien Environmentalist Conspiracy

Director Yorgos Lanthimos has made a habit of collaborating with Emma Stone specifically on dark comedy dramas with light sci-fi themes, such as 2023’s Poor Things and 2024’s Kinds of Kindness. And the trailer for their latest team-up, Bugonia, contains much of the same eclecticism, setting up a paranoia thriller that’s equal parts about environmentalism and extraterrestrials. Bugonia, inspired by Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 sci-fi film, Save The Green Planet!, follows high-powered CE

Mob Programming (2018)

By Woody Zuill {NOTE: This is a draft of a work in progress. It is likely to change over time as I flesh out the examples given here. It is likely there are spelling, grammar, and other errors throughout. Please read past the mistakes. I’ll try to get things cleaned up over time.] Fading Problems I’d like to introduce a concept I am calling “Fading Problems”. After doing Mob Programming for a while we started noticing that many of the problems we previously faced were no longer affecting us.

I made a floppy disk from scratch

I Made a Floppy Disk from Scratch Polymatt decided he was going to make a 3.5” floppy disk from scratch — and actually did. I’m not sure how many of you have actually cracked one of these things open and taken a look inside, but it’s actually a little bit more complex than I expected. Recreating a shell isn’t going to be the tough part. It’s actually this: recreating the media itself with some PET film and a bunch of chemicals. These disks are incredibly thin, and the magnetic film itself is m

I Made a Floppy Disk from Scratch

I Made a Floppy Disk from Scratch Polymatt decided he was going to make a 3.5” floppy disk from scratch — and actually did. I’m not sure how many of you have actually cracked one of these things open and taken a look inside, but it’s actually a little bit more complex than I expected. Recreating a shell isn’t going to be the tough part. It’s actually this: recreating the media itself with some PET film and a bunch of chemicals. These disks are incredibly thin, and the magnetic film itself is m

Why is this hard?

Every decision we make as developers is a tradeoff. We choose to do it because we believe that it holds benefit for what we are trying to accomplish. However, it is generally also a liability. The new code we are adding will need to be maintained, following new processes takes time, keeping infrastructure up-to-date and secure requires regular effort, etc. We are in an eternal battle to build what we need to build without being overwhelmed by these forces. If we're going to stave off that inevit

AI Mode in Search gets new agentic features and expands globally

AI is making Google Search radically more helpful, so you can ask any question on your mind and get things done. Starting today, we’re bringing more advanced agentic and personalized capabilities to AI Mode so you can make progress on your tasks and get more tailored information based on your interests. We’re also bringing AI Mode to even more people around the world. Read on for more. Get things done with agentic capabilities in AI Mode New agentic capabilities in AI Mode can help you get thi

Data, objects, and how we're railroaded into poor design (2018)

I don’t think we have any actually good programming languages, and I don’t think I’m alone in believing this. Programming is hard, and language design is harder. We’re still learning. But I think they’re all failing us in a shockingly fundamental way. The root of the trouble is a distinction I’d like to draw between data and objects. Let me know if you think there are better terms to use. Programming languages give us tools to represent things. Sometimes these things are values: the integer 1.

Phrack 72

Title : Introduction Author : Phrack Staff ==Phrack Inc.== Volume 0x10, Issue 0x48, Phile #0x01 of 0x12 |=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=| |=-------------------------=[ Introduction ]=----------------------------=| |=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=| |=----------------------=[ Phrack Staff ]=-------------------------=| |=-----------------------=[ [email protected] ]=--------------------------=| |=-----------------

Why Nim?

You might have heard of the line, "one ring to rule them all" from the book the Lord of the Rings. Though, this ring is an evil object created by the evil Sauron, the idea of just one thing existing to manage or control a lot of things at the same time, is something we all long for. We all need that one app which can manage all our tasks. We need that one card that can hold or manage all our credit and debit card information. How we long for a single language for the whole world (by the way thi

The Enterprise Experience

The Enterprise Experience It's the 18th of August. Today is a special day for me, as it marks my one-year anniversary of working at $ENTERPRISE. Before this I had been a professional software developer for the best part of a decade, but entirely in startups and SMEs. This time last year I made the decision to sell out and hit the big leagues for fun and financial profit. After my interview the only feedback I received was that I didn't have much exposure to enterprise software development, whi

‘Stranger Things’ creators may be leaving Netflix

Netflix could soon lose the creative team behind one of its biggest hits. Earlier this week, Variety and other Hollywood publications reported that Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers who created “Stranger Things” (and wrote and directed many episodes), were in talks to sign an exclusive deal with Paramount (now under the ownership of David Ellison’s Skydance). Then on Friday evening, Puck’s Matthew Belloni posted that the Duffers had in fact “made their choice” and were going to Paramount. The

Apple Finally Destroyed Steve Jobs’ Vision of the iPad. Good

For years, Apple treated the idea of windows on the iPad as sacrilege. But with iPadOS 26 installed, today’s iPads are doing macOS cosplay, becoming touchscreen Macs in all but name. And here’s the thing: It’s actually pretty good. So how did we get here? When did this fundamental shift occur that killed off Steve Jobs’ vision of the iPad? When Jobs first revealed the iPad in 2010, it was pitched as a “third category” of device—something between a phone and a laptop. For that category to justif

Airbrush art of the 80s (2015)

The 80’s was a decade of many things — excess, greed, and big hair, to name a few — but it was also the heyday for airbrush art. As a teenager in the late 80’s, I desperately wanted an airbrush so I could paint my favorite band logos on the back of my jean jacket, and maybe make some money on the side painting t-shirts and license plates. I thought those guys on the boardwalk selling custom shirts were gods — how could they produce such amazing works of art in just minutes? My graduation gift f

Airbrush art of the 80s was Chrome-tastic (2015)

The 80’s was a decade of many things — excess, greed, and big hair, to name a few — but it was also the heyday for airbrush art. As a teenager in the late 80’s, I desperately wanted an airbrush so I could paint my favorite band logos on the back of my jean jacket, and maybe make some money on the side painting t-shirts and license plates. I thought those guys on the boardwalk selling custom shirts were gods — how could they produce such amazing works of art in just minutes? My graduation gift f

I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file

August 11, 2025 I’ve tried them all. Notion, Todoist, Things 3, OmniFocus, Asana, Trello, Any.do, TickTick. I even built my own todo app once (spoiler: I never finished it). After years of productivity app hopping, I’m back to where I started: a plain text file called todo.txt . I’m not alone in this. Jeff Huang wrote about his “never-ending .txt file” that he’s used for over 14 years. Reading his post validated everything I’d discovered on my own. The Endless Search My productivity journey

Topics: app file things todo work

6 Weeks of Claude Code

6 Weeks of Claude Code Jul 30, 2025 - Orta Therox It is wild to think that it has been only a handful of weeks. Claude Code has considerably changed my relationship to writing and maintaining code at scale. I still write code at the same level of quality, but I feel like I have a new freedom of expression which is hard to fully articulate. Claude Code has decoupled myself from writing every line of code, I still consider myself fully responsible for everything I ship to Puzzmo, but the ability

A Haunted House Comes With a Body Count in This Free Found Footage Flick

Summerween is here, and horror fans are already queuing up their favorite horror films ahead of Halloween season. While blockbuster movies are always fun to rewatch, checking out lesser known cult classics can deliver solid scares, even without a massive budget. Found footage movies are especially adept at this, and there are some amazing options that won't cost a penny to watch. Hell House LLC is a found footage horror movie shot in a documentary format, and it's currently streaming for free o