This week’s blog post is a treasure trove of fascinating finds from around the web! From uncovering the shallowest depth AV receiver perfect for compact spaces, diving into personal reckonings instead of how-tos, exploring the simulation hypothesis, to hacking smart home devices for fun and functionality. I’ve also stumbled upon a simple yet effective guide on building a search engine with just 80 lines of Python and the inherently insightful “Mom Test” in product development. If that’s not enough, learn how to uncover users’ mental models with card sorting or how to find those diamonds in the rough when hiring. Join me in congratulating John Preskill on his recent award and delve into these insightful reads!
- Shallowest Depth Surround Sound AV Receiver for Compact Locations:
- You Don’t Need More How-To Advice — You Need a Beautiful and Painful Reckoning: Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have. There has been no “Harajuku Moment.”
- On whether we’re living in a simulation: Unrelated Announcement (Feb. 7): Huge congratulations to longtime friend-of-the-blog John Preskill for winning the 2024 John Stewart Bell Prize for research on fundamental issues in quantum mechanics! On the heels of my post on the fermion doubling problem, I’m sorry to spend even more time on the simulation hypothesis. I promise this will be the…
- The Mom Test: Embracing the “Mom Test” in product development
- How to hire low experience, high potential people: Finding diamonds in the rough
- A search engine in 80 lines of Python: In this post I explain how I built a search engine from scratch using python. The resulting search engine is used to search in the posts of the blogs I follow.
- Card Sorting: Uncover Users’ Mental Models: In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users’ expectations.
- Hacking a Smart Home Device: How I reverse engineered an ESP32-based smart home device to gain remote control access and integrate it with Home Assistant.
- Quality Assurance Across the Tech Industry: An overview of Quality Assurance (QA) approaches at various companies, and a look at tech segments where QA is on the decline, and where it is holding strong.