we tend to base our decisions on things we’ve experienced before, to make decisions easier

It is difficult to find a logical explanation for this, but apparently the prices that end with 9 trigger some kind of automatic mechanism

Offering to proceed with a $1 per day tariff and the one that costs $350 per year are mathematically equivalent, but trigger different reactions in customers. The first option can be compared to purchasing a water bottle in a grocery store, and the second option is more like purchasing a mobile phone

Mathematically equivalent statements are not necessarily equivalent psychologically

Do not lower prices. The price that you declare at the very beginning will become the reference point. You can also try to show your customers big numbers before starting to talk about the money

people are guided by the available prices to assess the rest of the offered goods

Salesmen in retail stores try to sell the most expensive things first, or at least offer them to customers. For instance, a person who came to buy a suit is first shown the suits. When the customer makes his choice, then the salesperson suggests appropriate accessories, such as a tie to go with the suit. Compared to the suit’s price, the tie looks very inexpensive and is an easy upsell

We rarely think in absolute terms, and we don’t have a universal measure to understand the value of a certain thing. Therefore, we tend to evaluate things by comparing them to others

The lack of a ready-made pattern of behavior makes people rely on “simple” factors in decision-making (such as other people’s behavior, template principles, pre-designed baits, etc.), rather than the correct ones

The circles drawn in the center of the image above are identical. But depending on their environment, their perceived size changes

New study shows that our personal memories might not be personal at all. All it takes to change your memories is thinking about a different person, and considering how they would approach what happened to you. Perhaps our character isn’t as unique as we think, but more fluid, and changed by every person we meet. Our evaluation of ourselves changes even when we think of objects, not just other people

if your goal is to build a remarkable life, then busyness and exhaustion should be your enemy

Hard work is deliberate practice. It’s not fun while you’re doing it, but you don’t have to do too much of it in any one day (the elite players spent, on average, 3.5 hours per day engaged in deliberate practice, broken into two sessions). It also provides you measurable progress in a skill, which generates a strong sense of contentment and motivation

The elite players were spending almost three times more hours than the average players on deliberate practice

The average players, they discovered, spread their work throughout the day. A graph included in the paper, which shows the average time spent working versus the waking hours of the day, is essentially flat. The elite players, by contrast, consolidated their work into two well-defined periods

the elite players slept an hour more per night than the average players

the elite players were significantly more relaxed than the average players, and the best of the best were the most relaxed of all

the more files you have and the bigger your project, the more resources VS Code will start to consume. The Search Indexing and File Watcher scripts start eating up your memory. Moreover, to work on such a project, you will open each file in a new tab, leading to multiple VS Code instances running simultaneously, and eventually, your CPU usage will start to look like this

FKs don't work well with online schema migrations.

FKs are a performance impact. The fact they require indexes is likely fine, since those indexes are needed anyhow. But the lookup made for each insert/delete is an overhead.

FKs are in your way to shard your database. Your app is accustomed to rely on FK to maintain integrity, instead of doing it on its own. It may even rely on FK to cascade deletes (shudder). When eventually you want to shard or extract data out, you need to change & test the app to an unknown extent.

To grow, trees photosynthesize and turn water and carbon dioxide (pulled from the air), into hydrocarbons. A living tree sucks carbon dioxide from the air and locks it into wood as it grows. Even when the tree dies (unless we burn it), the carbon is still locked up in the wood

For a wood fire, ash is primarily composed of metal carbonates and oxides (such as Calcium Carbonate, and Potassium Carbonate), from the compounds in the original wood

As long as there is a source of fuel (and oxygen), the fire will burn

As the fire gets hotter, more complete combustion occurs, less smoke is produced, and the flames lose the yellow color, turning more blue

yellow flames seen in a fire are the result of incomplete combustion

smoke produced (early stages of fire) is unburned carbon

It is the volatile compounds that out-gas from the wood, and eagerly react with oxygen, that are burning, and generate the flames we see

When the temperature of wood is increased (through application of heat), first the water is driven off. This occurs up to about 200°C. Between approximately 200°C–280°C the heat starts to break down the hemicellulose compounds into Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, Acetic Acid, (and more water vapour); these are driven out. Between 280°–500° decomposition of the longer cellulose and lignin begins and produces light tars and Methyl Alcohol

A couple of hundred intermediate products (organic acids, ketones, esters, aldehydes …) have been identified as being produced by the pyrolysis of wood

The pyrolysis of wood is an incredibly intricate and complex process that is not completely mapped out and the exact output depends of many variables

The correct term to describe what is going on when we ‘burn’ wood is Pyrolysis

The chemical composition of wood varies from species to species, but is approximately 50% carbon, 42% Oxygen, 6% Hydrogen, 1% Nitrogen, and 1% other elements (mainly Calcium, Potassium, Sodium, Magnesium, Iron, and Manganese) by weight

Wood is the hard-fibrous material that comes from the trunk, stems, roots, and branches of a once living tree

To boil everything down to a bullet list, the differences Firefox Developer Edition bring to the table include: A separate profile so your development environment can be configured differently to your regular browsing environment Access to cutting edge features not available elsewhere A 12 week lead time on support for the newest additions to web standards Default preferences tuned for developers Dark theme style out of the box

“Why don’t you assume you’ve written your book already — and all you have to do now is find it?”

Here’s Stephen Harrigan (talking about his book, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas)

In my experience writing books, it isn’t just a “resistance” thing or a “perfectionist” thing or a fear thing, it’s more about research and wondering if you’ve done enough of it. Research becomes your way of procrastinating, because, let’s face it, research is just more fun than writing. (Me, personally, I became a professional writer so I could be a professional reader.)

There’s an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing. When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know.

great place to start finding circuit schematic is the Discover Circuits site. They have a comprehensive list of fun circuits to experiment with

Step 19: Your Third Circuit

Step 18: Your Second Circuit

Step 17: Your First Circuit

designed to allow you to be able to insert an integrated circuit into the center

To use wire in your circuit, simply cut a piece to size, strip a 1/4" of insulation from each end of the wire and use it to connect points together on the breadboard

When things are wired in parallel, they are wired side by side, such that electricity passes through all of them at the same time, from one common point to another common point

When things are wired in series, things are wired one after another, such that electricity has to pass through one thing, then the next thing, then the next, and so on

circuit is a complete and closed path through which electric current can flow

electricity is typically defined as having a voltage and a current rating

it is recommended that you use insulated 22awg (22 gauge) solid core wire

Wires are nice because they allow you to connect things without adding virtually no resistance to the circuit

there typically runs two continuous bus lines. One is intended as a power bus and the other is intended as a ground bus

They are covered with a grid of holes, which are split into electrically continuous rows. In the central part there are two columns of rows that are side-by-side

Breadboards are special boards for prototyping electronics

Batteries are represented in a circuit by a series of alternating lines of different length

battery is a container which converts chemical energy into electricity

This is dependent on the type of switch it is

switch is basically a mechanical device that creates a break in a circuit. When you activate the switch, it opens or closes the circuit

it is ideal to light up multiple LEDs by wiring them in parallel

Like all diodes, LEDs create a voltage drop in the circuit, but typically do not add much resistance

special type of diode that lights up when electricity passes through it. Like all diodes, the LED is polarized and electricity is only intended to pass through in one direction

For instance, if you have two 10K resistors in series between power (5V) and ground (0V), the point where these two resistors meet will be half the power supply (2.5V) because both of the resistors have identical values

current is rated in Amps

integrated circuit is an entire specialized circuit that has been miniaturized and fit onto one small chip with each leg of the chip connecting to a point within the circuit. These miniaturized circuits typically consist of components such as transistors, resistors, and diodes

PNP transistors allow electricity to pass from the emitter pin to the collector pin

NPN transistors allow electricity to pass from the collector pin to the emitter pin

transistor takes in a small electrical current at its base pin and amplifies it such that a much larger current can pass between its collector and emitter pins. The amount of current that passes between these two pins is proportional to the voltage being applied at the base pin

the other side connects to power

The ring found on one end of the diode indicates the side of the diode which connects to ground

Diodes are components which are polarized. They only allow electrical current to pass through them in one direction. This is useful in that it can be placed in a circuit to prevent electricity from flowing in the wrong direction

Ceramic disc capacitors are non-polarized, meaning that electricity can pass through them no matter how they are inserted in the circuit

Electrolytic capacitors are typically polarized. This means that one leg needs to be connected to the ground side of the circuit and the other leg must be connected to power. If it is connected backwards, it won't work correctly

capacitor is a component that stores electricity and then discharges it into the circuit when there is a drop in electricity

With alternating current, the direction electricity flows throughout the circuit is constantly reversing

resistors add resistance to the circuit and reduces the flow of electrical current. It is represented in a circuit diagram as a pointy squiggle with a value next to it

electricity in a circuit must be used

With Direct Current, electricity flows in one direction between power and ground

Potentiometers are measured in ohms like resistors, but rather than having color bands, they have their value rating written directly on them (i.e. "1M"). They are also marked with an "A" or a "B, " which indicated the type of response curve it has

Potentiometers are variable resistors. In plain English, they have some sort of knob or slider that you turn or push to change resistance in a circuit. If you have ever used a volume knob on a stereo or a sliding light dimmer, then you have used a potentiometer

The round notch on one edge of the IC chip indicates the top of the chip. The pin to the top left of the chip is considered pin 1. From pin 1, you read sequentially down the side until you reach the bottom (i.e. pin 1, pin 2, pin 3..). Once at the bottom, you move across to the opposite side

As a beginner, you will be mainly working with DIP chips. These have pins for through-hole mounting. As you get more advanced, you may consider SMT chips which are surface mount soldered to one side of a circuit board

you can learn all about integrated circuits by looking up their datasheets. On the datasheet you will learn the functionality of each pin. It should also state the voltage and current ratings of both the chip itself and each individual pin

There are two basic types of transistors, which are NPN and PNP

They are represented in schematic as a line with a triangle pointing at it

it requires energy to pass through a diode and this results in a drop of voltage. This is typically a loss of about 0.7V

The most commonly encountered types of capacitors are ceramic disc capacitors that look like tiny M&Ms with two wires sticking out of them and electrolytic capacitors that look more like small cylindrical tubes with two wires coming out the bottom (or sometimes each end)

Capacitors are measured in Farads

Any resistor of over 1000 ohms is typically shorted using the letter K. For instance, 1,000 would be 1K

Anyhow... a resistor with the markings brown, black, orange, gold will translate as follows: 1 (brown) 0 (black) x 1,000 = 10,000 with a tolerance of +/- 5%

You read the values from left to right towards the (typically) gold band

two different ways in which you can wire things together called series and parallel

switch does not add any resistance to a circuit and simply adding a switch between power and ground will create a short circuit

Always make sure that you never accidentally connect positive voltage to ground while wiring things in parallel

electricity always follows the path of least resistance to ground

It is very important to prevent short circuits by making sure that the positive voltage is never wired directly to ground

Shorts are bad because they will result in your battery and/or circuit overheating, breaking, catching on fire, and/or exploding

there needs to be something wired between positive and ground that adds resistance to the flow of electricity and uses it up. If positive voltage is connected directly to ground and does not first pass through something that adds resistance, like a motor, this will result in a short circuit

Voltage is obviously rated in Volts

There are two types of electrical  signals , those being alternating current (AC), and direct current (DC)

The rate of reversal is measured in Hertz, which is the number of reversals per second

The result of the uniform interface is that requests from different clients look the same, whether the client is a chrome browser, a linux server, a python script, an android app or anything else

The client can request code from the server, and then the response from the server will contain some code, usually in the form of a script, when the response is in HTML format. The client then can execute that code

data the server sends contain information about whether or not the data is cacheable. If the data is cacheable, it might contain some sort of a version number. The version number is what makes caching possible: since the client knows which version of the data it already has (from a previous response), the client can avoid requesting the same data again and again

In order for an API to be RESTful, it has to adhere to 6 constraints

there might be a number of servers in the middle. These servers might provide a security layer, a caching layer, a load-balancing layer, or other functionality

Stateless means the server does not remember anything about the user who uses the API

client and the server act independently, each on its own, and the interaction between them is only in the form of requests, initiated by the client only, and responses, which the server send to the client only as a reaction to a request

Uniform interface

What the server does when you, the client, call one of its APIs depends on 2 things that you need to provide to the server

The representation of the state can be in a JSON format, and probably for most APIs this is indeed the case. It can also be in XML or HTML format

It means when a RESTful API is called, the server will transfer to the client a representation of the state of the requested resource.

RESTful web application exposes information about itself in the form of information about its resources. It also enables the client to take actions on those resources, such as create new resources (i.e. create a new user) or change existing resources (i.e. edit a post).

A single on/off decision is best understandable using a toggle switch.

A single yes/no option is more usable with a checkbox.

Independent items use toggle switches for selection.

To select related items in a list, use checkboxes.

Sometimes toggle switch does not clearly indicate whether it is a state or action.

Indeterminate state is best shown using a checkbox

Selecting multiple options in a list provides better experience using checkboxes.

Checkboxes are preferred when an explicit action is required to apply settings.

The options that require instant response are best selected using a toggle switch.

The children watched an educational video that included clips from Sesame Street and covered math topics such as counting and addition as well as reading topics for comparison

boys and girls as old as 8 had similar abilities when it came to perceiving numbers and grasping elementary mathematics concepts

study of 104 children from ages 3 to 10 found similar patterns of brain activity in boys and girls as they engaged in basic math tasks

factors other than biological differences explain why girls are less likely to pursue degrees and jobs in math and science

males may be more likely to choose science because they are less likely than females to have strong reading, writing and language skills

women in these countries are under less pressure to choose a field that promises an economic payback and have more freedom to pursue what interests them most.

Yet paradoxically, females in wealthier countries with more gender equality, including the U.S., were less likely than females in other countries to get degrees in fields such as math and computer science.

Chords with low uncertainty and high surprise, and vice versa, evoked high pleasure

With every negative emotion you’re experiencing, ask yourself: “Why am I feeling this? Is there a past experience that’s triggering this?”In short – sit with your discomforts, don’t run from them

Be careful of excess coffee consumption – it’s very destructive to the adrenal glands

The average American adult is sleeping 6 hours and 31 minutes per night 

A tiny percentage of people have the DEC2 gene, a genetic mutation that produces a short sleeping phenotype“The probability that you are a DEC2 carrier is very low… You’re far more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime.” – Dr. Matthew WalkerPeople with the DEC2 gene only need ~6.25 hours of sleep per night

Here’s a final tally for our comparison

BFS looks at each adjacent node and doesn't consider the children of those adjacent nodes. DFS looks at each adjacent node, and looks at all the children of the current adjacent nodes. It again, looks at the children of the next adjacent node (adjacent to the children of the prevoius)

Humans are worse at this because we all have different goals, whereas all ants work towards the survival of their colonies.

The big idea behind Brave is that instead of supporting websites by viewing their banner ads, you can pay them directly through your browser

Tutorials and how-to guides are similar because they are both concerned with describing practical steps, while what how-to guides share with technical referenceis that they’re what we need when we are actually at work, coding. Reference guides and explanation are similar because they’re concerned with theoretical knowledge, and finally, what tutorials have in common with explanation is that they are most useful when we are studying, rather than actually working

Summary: Napping

NapNumber = 5.6 - 0.8*CoreSleep

NapDuration = (SleepRequired - SleepObtained) / 3

Six naps no sleep; 4 naps one-point-five hours sleep; 3 naps three hours sleep; 2 naps four-point-five hours sleep; one nap six hours sleep*.

"Everyman sleep schedule". Were it not for that gravitation and a tendency to take a "core sleep", I might even suspect that the inventor of the Uberman sleep cycle suffered from a rare mutation that causes circadian arrhythmicity. People with that disorder cannot sleep well in a long block over the night and take multiple naps during the day

Even though naps provide an excellent compensation for lost sleep in the night, they cannot provide a full functional replacement. To achieve your maximum cognitive capacity, you need to run your night sleep uninterrupted until completion!

Early naps will not provide full compensation. Late naps will last longer and will shorten sleep in the following night

For a nap to express its full power, the following conditions must be met (in order of importance): it should take place at the center of the midday circadian nadir (see: Best nap timing). This corresponds with Mediterranean siesta it cannot be regulated with alarm clocks, caffeine, or other sleep "tricks". Coffee naps are a good idea for people in a hurry, not for those who care about brain productivity it should be the only nap of the day (i.e. it cannot be part of a polyphasic sleep schedule) it works best in free running sleep with no sleep deficit it works best in people with no physical or mental health issues it works best in habitual nappers who improved the quality of their naps from month to month by adjusting and perfecting little details in their surroundings. Beginners are often too anxious to fall asleep

each hour of lost night sleep requires 20 min. of replacement nap time

The art of napping has the power to double creative productivity. Churchill was a famous biphasic sleeper. His naps let him squeeze two productive days into 24 hours

Analysis of data collected in 1970 from 48.738 young Swedish men, compared to national suicide registers, shows that lower intelligence increases suicide risk. Low emotional control significantly contributes to suicide in young men, but becomes less of a factor with age. Low intelligence, however, remains a significant contributor to male suicide throughout life.

In general, use synchronous communication when the following is true

Pyramid of Remote Team Communication post.

It’s hard to build rapport and personal relationships with only written communication

Slack boasts that users spend 9+ hours per workday connected to the app. 90 minutes of active usage spread over 9 hours is a whole lot of interruptions.

2015 study conducted by Yahoo Labs found that the most common email response time was just 2 minutes

synchronous communication is when you send a message and the recipient processes the information and responds immediately. In-person communication, like meetings, are examples of purely synchronous communication

asynchronous communication is when you send a message without expecting an immediate response. For example, you send an email. I open and respond to the email several hours later

Study after study after study into remote work has made one thing clear: Remote workers are more productive than their office-bound counterparts.

The top reasons why a product fails:It’s too complicated – simplicity is kingIt doesn’t spread by word-of-mouthIt doesn’t take advantage of the power of iterationThe founder is too fearful of creating something novelIt’s not launched into a community

When you say “yes” to something, you’re basically saying “no” to 1,000 other things

principle of least privilege states that any process, user or program has only the privileges it needs to do its job

If you really want to impress your security consultant, then casually mention Kerckhoffs Principle which is a more formal way of saying ‘security through obscurity is not sufficient’

Hashing is the process of turning one set of data into another through a reproducible algorithm

symmetric key is. It’s a key that is ‘the same’ one used on both sides of the communication

asymmetric key is one where access to the key used to encrypt the message does not imply access to decrypt the message

Authorization is the process of determining whether you are allowed to do something or not

Security through obscurity is security through the design of a system. In other words, if the design of your system were to become public then it would be easy to expose

Role-Based Access Control gives permission to a more abstract entity called a role. Rather than giving access to that user directly, you give the user access to the role, and then that role has the access permissions set for it

This is why it’s important to ‘salt‘ your hash with a secret key so that knowledge of the hash algorithm isn’t enough to crack a lot of passwords

Encryption vs Encoding

for many women and purple can induce soothing and calmness with the image of royalty

Colours and emotion 

Both men and women have blue as their top colour

The colours black & white have opposing meaning in western and eastern cultures

Think of each colour in context of its environment, for example do you have a mostly grey, white or muted colours on your website then make your call to action button(s) green or red

our brain processes visuals 60,000x faster than text

Colour is such a pervasive part of everything we encounter visually in our world, it evokes emotions which in turn drives decision making

When creating or refining your brand identity think about pairing your main colour with a complimentary colour or use the 3 grouping guides below

We are using colour to communicate the value of our product or service

our eyes can only pick up certain light wavelengths

The theory of colour is a discipline that stretches back to at least the 15th century. It encompasses chemistry, physics and mathematics to effectively explain colour

There are 2 primary colour systems (to reproduce colour) we use on a daily basis additive & subtractive. Anything that emits light (sun, screen or projector) uses additive and everything else reflects colour and uses subtractive colour

The colour wheel is where you need to start when planning a colour scheme or branding for your business and for sales and marketing campaigns. The colour wheel consists of primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

round shapes are more trustworthy & straight sharp edges are more striking

“When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control.” - Atomic Habits

“The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work.” - The War of Art

“To write a great book, you must first become the book.”  - Atomic Habits

I could and probably will write an entire article (or 10) on how I approach SEO research, but for the purpose of this article, I’ll just share that I use these tools: Ahrefs, Keyword Planner, and Keywords Everywhere.

Conversations, books and articles, personal experiences, and random Google searches

What is something that I can uniquely contribute?

I set an open invitation to my brain to take note of anything interesting. More specifically, I look for anything within the intersection of: (1) interesting, (2) doesn’t exist online in that exact form, and (3) something I can contribute uniquely to

In my opinion, writing should never be something that you do just to check off of your to-do list. At its core, writing is a mechanism to try to deliver value to others. And over time, I’ve defined that as my core goal.

There’s a great tool called Draftback, which essentially lets you “go back in time to look over your own shoulder as you write”

Writing Process Steps:Ideation: PassiveTracking: ActiveOutline - ActiveIdea Arbitrage - PassiveResearch - ActiveWriting - Active

Practice makes any seemingly impossible task familiar

LINQ (a querying syntax in C# and VB.NET) uses the order FROM ... WHERE ... SELECT

Database engines in practice don’t actually run queries by joining, and then filtering, and then grouping, because they implement a bunch of optimizations reorder things to make the query run faster as long as reordering things won’t change the results of the query

SELECT isn’t the first thing, it’s like the 5th thing!

The vertical bar on the letter T represents the depth of related skills and expertise in a single field, whereas the horizontal bar is the ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in other areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one's own.

To address the availability concern, new architectures were developed to minimize the impact of partitions. For instance, splitting data sets into smaller ranges called shards can minimize the amount of data that is unavailable during partitions. Furthermore, mechanisms to automatically alter the roles of various cluster members based on network conditions allow them to regain availability quickly

typically less flexible and generalized than their more conventional relational counterparts. They also usually only offer a subset of full SQL and relational features, which means that they might not be able to handle certain kinds of usage. Many NewSQL implementations also store a large part of or their entire dataset in the computer's main memory. This improves performance at the cost of greater risk to unpersisted changes