John Cox

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W(e)blinks

AWS Tips I Wish I'd Known Before I Started | Notes | W(e)blinks

This guide collects practical AWS deployment lessons covering how to fundamentally rethink operations when moving from physical servers to cloud infrastructure—emphasizing stateless application design, complete automation, and treating individual instances as disposable rather than precious. Key recommendations span application architecture (externalize session state, logs, and uploads), operations discipline (disable SSH access to force automation, use IAM roles instead of shared credentials), cost management (granular billing alerts, reserved instances), and infrastructure patterns (multi-AZ redundancy, horizontal scaling, ELB health checks for auto-scaling). The author stresses that successful AWS adoption requires reshaping both technical practices and operational mindset, not simply replicating on-premises setups in the cloud.

Permalink developmentadvice

Harvard Business Review

Quick and Dirty Tips

Get-Fit Guy : What to Eat Before and After Exercising :: Quick and Dirty Tips ™

I don't have enough content from the article "The Role of Trust in Fitness" to write an accurate summary. The excerpt provided only shows the title, author, and date along with the beginning of the introduction ("I want to talk about an important psychological aspect to fitness and its impact on outcomes..."), but the full article text is cut off. To write a meaningful summary that distinguishes this piece from others and explains why it was worth saving, I would need access to the complete article and its main arguments.

Permalink nutritionhealthfitnessadvice

andrewkelley.me

JavaScript Callbacks are Pretty Okay - Andrew Kelley

The author argues that callback-based asynchronous JavaScript can be clean and readable without resorting to compile-to-JS languages like CoffeeScript or Kal, provided you follow two organizational rules: avoid nontrivial anonymous functions and place all function declarations after the synchronous code. Using real examples, the author demonstrates how this approach dramatically improves readability compared to deeply nested callbacks, while maintaining the advantages of writing in plain JavaScript and avoiding the friction of added build steps, reduced contributor accessibility, and code that appears foreign to potential users.

Permalink programmingdevelopmentadvice

PixelsTech

10 design flaws of JavaScript | Pixelstech.net

JavaScript's rapid ten-day design left it with fundamental flaws that burden developers, particularly the lack of namespaces and modularity making it unsuitable for large projects, confusing distinctions between null and undefined, and unpredictable behavior like automatic semicolon insertion that can silently break code. The language compounds these issues through problematic type coercion with the == operator, the + operator's dual nature causing unintended string concatenation, NaN's non-reflexive equality, and the difficulty of distinguishing arrays from objects without complex validation logic. The article advocates for using strict equality (===) and awareness of these quirks as essential practices for reliable JavaScript development.

Permalink programmingdevelopmentadvice

shouldiuseacarousel.com

Should I Use A Carousel?

Carousels are ineffective design elements that users largely ignore—studies consistently show that only a tiny fraction of homepage visitors interact with rotating content, with the vast majority never progressing past the first slide. Beyond poor engagement, carousels create serious accessibility problems for keyboard and screen reader users that cannot be adequately fixed through code alone, while simultaneously serving primarily to convince stakeholders that their content is prominently featured rather than actually reaching audiences.

Permalink accessibilityadvice

Marc and Angel Hack Life

10 Choices You Will Regret in 10 Years

This piece identifies ten common life choices that breed regret—from wearing social masks and keeping negative company to avoiding growth and procrastinating—and argues that most regrets stem from comparing our actual decisions against idealized fantasies of who we think we should be. The author contends that embracing our fundamental imperfection and humanity, rather than defending an inflated self-image, allows us to release past regrets and focus on making authentic choices going forward. The practical advice centers on accepting reality rather than endlessly analyzing how things "should have been," and on taking deliberate action today rather than deferring meaningful goals to an imaginary future.

Permalink mental healthadvicelife

stuartkhall.com

iOS Development Tips I Would Want If I Was Starting Out Today

This article offers practical advice for beginner iOS developers, emphasizing modern tools and practices like ARC for memory management, blocks for cleaner code, and Grand Central Dispatch instead of manual threading. The author advocates for code-based layouts over Interface Builder for anything beyond basic apps, recommends embracing open-source libraries managed through CocoaPods, and stresses the importance of crash tracking, code analysis, and localization from the project's start. Throughout, the piece balances technical guidance with opinions on what tools work best in real-world development scenarios.

Permalink programmingdevelopmentadvicetutorial

Lifehacker

Untitled (http://lifehacker.com/5935550/the-interview-question-that-is-always-asked-and-how-to-nail-it)

The interviewer's closing question "Do you have any questions for us?" is a critical moment that reveals your priorities and work ethic, yet many candidates squander it by asking nothing or asking self-serving questions about remote work and promotion timelines. Instead, you should prepare two or three thoughtful questions that prompt the interviewers to elaborate on team needs, immediate contributions you could make, the company's appetite for innovation, how success is defined, or what a typical day looks like—questions that demonstrate critical thinking while giving you a chance to sell yourself as someone genuinely invested in solving their problems rather than just using the position as a stepping stone.

Permalink productivityadvicecareersjobs

www.reddit.com

My first API: Google Weather. Thoughts? : PHP

This is not an article, but rather a Reddit discussion thread about code review feedback for a PHP weather API wrapper library. The commenter "hiii" critiques the original poster's design decisions—arguing that getWeather() should require a location parameter, that setIcons() shouldn't be part of the API since developers can map conditions to icons themselves, and that error handling via displayError() violates separation of concerns by mixing view logic into the library. The original poster incorporates this feedback by removing the default location, eliminating the setIcons() method, and changing error handling to return false instead of printing HTML.

Permalink programmingdevelopmentadvice

deadspin.com

What Happens When A 35-Year-Old Man Retakes The SAT?

Drew Magary retakes the SAT as an adult after 19 years to see whether he's become smarter or dumber, completing a practice test under the same conditions he experienced in 1993—bubble sheets, No. 2 pencils, and all. He discovers that the test remains fundamentally unchanged and poorly designed, relying on outdated technology while charging students thousands in test-prep fees, and finds his own performance improved slightly on the verbal section (where he reads constantly) but declined in math (which he never uses). The essay is less an argument for SAT reform than a darkly funny documentation of how pointless and grueling the standardized test experience remains, structured to punish rather than encourage students and designed by people who seem to actively enjoy making teenagers miserable.

Permalink adviceeducationpersonal financehumor

Inc.com

10 Things Employees Want Most | Inc.com

This article lists ten factors that motivate employees and reduce turnover, drawing on the experience of a software company CEO who implemented a results-only work environment where staff can work anywhere, anytime, as long as they complete their tasks. The ten desires—purpose, goals, responsibility, autonomy, flexibility, attention, innovation opportunities, open-mindedness, transparency, and fair compensation—are illustrated with expert commentary and real-world examples showing how trusting employees and giving them control paradoxically increases productivity and loyalty. The underlying argument is that successful managers focus less on surveillance and rigid schedules and more on creating conditions where employees feel valued, heard, and empowered to do meaningful work.

Permalink leadershipadvicebusinesscareers

Get Rich Slowly

How to Know When to Quit

Seth Godin's concept of "the dip" versus "the cul-de-sac" distinguishes between temporary struggle worth pushing through and genuine dead ends worth abandoning. A cul-de-sac is a true dead end where you've tried solutions and hit immovable obstacles (like a micro-managing boss who won't allow remote work), while a dip is the difficult middle stretch of any worthwhile endeavor that successful people overcome by "leaning in" harder and changing their approach. The piece argues that strategic quitting—based on calm assessment of whether you're making measurable progress and whether your goal is realistically attainable—is smarter than either never quitting or reflexively quitting whenever things get hard.

Permalink productivityadvicepersonal financeentrepreneurship

www.managementexchange.com

The Art of Impossibility | Management Innovation eXchange

The author argues that most organizations waste energy defending the status quo rather than pursuing genuinely transformative goals, using RIM's dismissal of the iPhone as a cautionary example of how companies become mentally paralyzed by threats to their established beliefs. He contends that only about 5% of organizational effort goes toward pursuing the truly impossible, while the rest gets absorbed debating incremental improvements within the realm of the "possible"—a timidity that guarantees stagnation in a world hungry for discontinuous innovation. His prescription: treat any goal the status quo considers feasible as insufficiently ambitious, and instead empower the creative renegades already inside most organizations to pursue what competitors consider impossible.

Permalink leadershipstrategyadvicebusiness

noupe

Websites Shouldn't Look The Same Across Different Browsers…Here Is Why

Clients often expect websites to look identical across all browsers and devices, but designers and developers struggle to explain why this is technically impossible and strategically unwise. The piece identifies technical barriers—different vendor implementations, browser plugins, user preferences, and screen sizes—that make pixel-perfect consistency unachievable, and argues that pursuing such uniformity wastes resources on code hacks, sacrifices usability, and prevents innovation. Instead, the focus should be on functional consistency and allowing graceful degradation so users on newer browsers experience enhanced features while older browsers receive a stable, working baseline.

Permalink designadvicecss3

The Emotion Machine

An Extreme Fear of Disapproval | The Emotion Machine

Fear of disapproval, rooted in our evolutionary need for tribal acceptance and reinforced by childhood social conditioning, can paradoxically prevent people from building the relationships they desperately need—creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where anxiety-driven withdrawal makes them invisible rather than accepted. The piece explains how social anxiety causes people to perceive normal judgment as existential threat and argues that gradual exposure to social situations, starting small and working up to more challenging interactions, allows the brain to rewire its threat response and weaken the anxiety over time.

Permalink philosophypsychologymental healthadvice

CBS News

Why Everyone Should Work in Sales — at Least for a While | BNET

Gates presented AI as presenting threats comparable to an alien invasion, using his UN General Assembly appearance to warn world leaders about both the transformative potential and serious risks posed by the technology. VandeHei, despite general AI pessimism, found optimistic applications and wrote a productivity guide on doing more with less resources. Farm-ng, a California startup, is deploying AI-powered robots to address agricultural labor shortages by automating tasks like seeding, weeding, and harvesting. A lawsuit accuses major AI companies of coordinating an artificial slowdown to violate antitrust laws. DraftKings and other betting apps are facing accusations of deliberately fostering addiction, with the platform allegedly targeting vulnerable gamblers based on employee testimony.

Permalink advicebusinesscareers