I’ve always wanted to find great case studies from people building things. Not high level blogposts dictating “this is how you should do X”, but “here’s the 20 things we tried and the data we had at the time, and what we learned.” I started a side project at some point to aggrega … | Continue reading
One of the most enjoyable and educational shows I’ve watched in a while. Hilarious characters who demonstrate how difficult and thankless farming can be. Some things I’ve learned: How a cultivator works How exact tractor rows need to be How heavy rain or weeks of drought affect t … | Continue reading
As a longtime donor, got to visit the Internet Archive! They protect 50+ petabytes of web history over the past 28 years — nearly 835 billion web pages and 44 million books. Each drive rack holds 2.88 petabytes of data, so these 3 racks are ~2% of the archive counting backups. | Continue reading
The Wordpress and open source communities have lots of thoughts on Matt Mullenweg’s actions after his talk at WordCamp. Much of this commentary has overlooked what I think is a core concern at the heart of Matt’s argument: the growing role and influence of private equity in tech, … | Continue reading
I recently ordered a Comma.ai kit to add semi-autonomous driving capabilities to my 2018 Mazda CX-5. It took some trial and error (and help from the Comma.ai community on Discord) to get it working properly, but I highly recommend it as I’ll explain later. I’m sharing the steps I … | Continue reading
I wrote this post a week ago and have been thinking hard about whether I believe the premise, which is that within a few years, the norm for source code will be that it is written and modified by LLMs via prompting. For all practical purposes, all source code will be written this … | Continue reading
Inspired this weekend by Kygo’s latest album release, filmed on a mile-high rock outcropping in Norway, featuring a full-size Steinway piano, orchestra, and pyrotechnics. My favorite moments / timestamps: 4:30, 16:40, 18:30, 35:50, 56:40 | Continue reading
Perhaps the most important insight NASA has gleaned from studying team dynamics—in space and on Earth—is the preciousness of one trait in particular: a sense of humour. Studies of crews overwintering at the South Pole show that a confined group needs people to fulfil various role … | Continue reading
As a birthday present, I purchased and migrated to a new personal domain name. To mark the occasion, I put together a gallery from archive.org of my personal site throughout the years, from zacharyhamed.com to zhamed.com to zmh.org. July 2001 June 2004 September 2004 February 201 … | Continue reading
📍 Big Sky, Montana Jan 7, 2024 Zachary Hamed @zmh | Continue reading
History is not true. You can change history. The actual factual events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is interpretation. It’s never too late to change a story. The past is not true by Derek Sivers | Continue reading
From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to ti … | Continue reading
Mike Krieger: I’ll share a funny anecdote about the Explore experiment. Facebook has all these internal A/B testing tooling and we hooked into it and we ran our first machine learning on the Explore experiment and we filed a bug report and I’m like, “Hey, your tool isn’t working, … | Continue reading
📷 Bad news: I accidentally left my bag on a train at Grand Central Station today. Good news: While waiting at the Lost & Found, I got to enjoy these art deco-style MTA posters from George Pataki’s time as governor. (And shortly thereafter, got my bag back.) | Continue reading
Hit a 400 day streak learning French on Duolingo today! Started as a New Years Resolution in 2022 and became a nice daily (ish — you get to take some days off and maintain the streak) ritual that feels productive. I wish the exercises were a little more conversational, but still … | Continue reading
Last month, after almost exactly ten years, my side projects Daily 140 and Macaw stopped sending out emails thanks to Twitter's API changes. Some stats: 14,547 users 21,201 Twitter accounts that Daily 140 users chose to monitor 7,333,659 total Twitter accounts monitored for likes … | Continue reading
Gorgeous reimagining of the tape recorder from Teenage Engineering, complete with a spinning tape reel, “off the record” mode, and voice memos. I love single purpose devices — have been thinking of getting an old iPod, and this isn’t helping. teenage.engineering/products/… | Continue reading
📷 Just discovered Poolsuite.fm’s Are.na board — such great vintage and design inspiration: www.are.na/share/aRC… Some favorites: | Continue reading
Delhi architecture Walking around Agra The Taj Mahal | Continue reading
The National Orchid Garden Raffles Hotel Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay, and the National Museum of Singapore | Continue reading
As part of my annual website cleanup, I’m moving off Medium to Micro.blog. A few of the steps I’m taking: Export Medium archive in Settings Remove subdomain (blog.zhamed.com) from Medium Enable subdomain on Micro.blog Enable Medium subdomain URLs (i.e. zmh.medium.com instead of m … | Continue reading
A running list of things that are easy to forget, relatively quick to do, and make your life easier on a daily basis. Review and reorder apps on homescreen Add keyboard shortcuts for common actions Add TextExpander / Alfred snippets for frequently used phrases Your addresses / em … | Continue reading
Recently purchased the Sofirn BLF SP36 Research Mainly the Reddit flashlight forum, this thread in particular Budget Light Forum | Continue reading
I’ve been using a Moccamaster for the past two years and love the way it makes coffee. Choosing a model was relatively hard though, since they have multiple options and models. A few friends have asked how I picked a model, so I wanted to share the 3 main decisions you’ll need to … | Continue reading
Recently upgraded my Dyson v7 to a Dyson v11 after the battery ran out. The v11 has a larger bin, stronger suction, and swappable batteries.1 Research v11 absolute vs torque - only difference is soft roller attachment, which you can buy on eBay separately v11 torque vs animal - a … | Continue reading
The art and science of creating chance This post was originally published on Medium in 2015. In 2014 I was lucky enough to speak at Morning Prayers, a secular Harvard tradition that has existed since its founding in 1636. Below is a copy of my remarks. Harvard University · Senior … | Continue reading
Last spring, I took a class on social psychology. It was one of the most useful classes I’ve ever taken, so I figured I’d share some of the more interesting findings. Each paragraph has a citation to its right so you can get more information or read the original study. 1. Recipro … | Continue reading