159. Home Brewed Coffee

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The cover photo shows the coffee beans I just bought—the aroma the moment they were poured was heavenly. I spontaneously bought a semi-auto coffee machine over New Year, and I’ve been enjoying two cups a day since.

Record the down-to-earth trending technologies seen every week, and publish them here after screening. If you find it good, you can follow this weekly to get update notifications.

Technical Learning

Python Guide for JavaScript Engineers
https://luckrnx09.com/python-guide-for-javascript-engineers/zh-cn/
A great Python primer for JS devs. it uses a comparative approach: first showing how to do something in JS, then re-implementing it in Python to highlight the differences.

The Cost of Owning a Tesla in the US
https://geekplux.com/posts/cost-of-tesla
An interesting breakdown by GeekPlux. Cost = $43000 (Ouch) + $1390 + $200 + $3225 - $7500 (Potential Tax Credit) = $40315. Seems reasonable.

Trending Papers in Computer Science
https://trendingpapers.com/papers
A “GitHub Trending” style site for computer science research. Perfect for staying up-to-date with new papers, especially in AI.

Trending Tools

Devv: An AI Search Engine for Developers
https://github.com/devv-ai/devv/releases/tag/v0.1.0
Devv is much better at coding-related queries than traditional search. It helps you learn new domains quickly. I’ve partnered with them to package it as a desktop app via Pake—try setting a Raycast shortcut to summon it instantly.

Bio Link: A Simple and Clean Bio Tool
http://bio.link
After trying Bento (a bit too complex) and Linktree (not my aesthetic), I found Bio Link. It’s minimalist and easy to use, with plenty of configuration options for your personal landing page.

Chrome Web Store: 2023 Favorites
https://chromewebstore.google.com/collection/2023_favorites
A collection of the best new Chrome extensions from 2023, many featuring AI integration.

GitHub Worth: How much is your account worth?
https://github-worth.vercel.app/
A fun toy that calculates your GitHub “value” based on commits, stars, and followers.

Random Thoughts

Excerpt: “I Delivered Express in Beijing”

Lately I have been reading “I Delivered Express in Beijing” before bed, and I copied down some lines I found really interesting. The author looks like an ordinary worker, but he is actually a philosopher of life.

1. This made me realize that freedom really lies in what you are able to be aware of, not in what you enjoy. For a farmer with little education, even though his farm work is bound by the twenty-four solar terms every year, he does not feel unfree. In the slack season he plays cards with family and friends, in the busy season he finishes a day in the fields and has a little drink at home in the evening, and he feels content and satisfied, as if everything he does is what he wants to do. But the more educated you are, the more complex your thinking and awareness, the harder it is to feel free at work. The freedom I mean is a personal pursuit and self-realization built on a highly developed self-awareness, the spiritual content that truly sets one person apart from another.

2. Working purely to make a living is as sad as being in prison, which is why few people claim they work only to make a living. The usual lines are: I am interested in what I do, I like the people I work with, work makes my life feel full, and so on. Even if these are true, they are one-sided, because without working we could just as well do what interests us, spend time with people we like and live full lives. The older generation was more candid: they would ask back how you would feed yourself without working. They did not find it sad to imprison themselves in work and limit their own freedom. On the contrary, they took pride in blind labor. Indeed, back then we had no artists or philosophers, so only the lazy did not work. As Maugham said, not everyone still knows what to do with themselves once they no longer have to scramble for food and warmth.

3. At home my parents only taught me to be kind to others and never told me I also had to stand up for my own interests. I would not be that foolish now, today I would accept it without hesitation. It is every worker’s legal right, not a favor from the capitalist. If other colleagues are unhappy about it, that is a conflict between them and the employer, not between them and me. If they aim their resentment at the wrong target, I will kindly remind them. Such a simple principle, and back then I could not figure it out. Perhaps it was because nobody had ever talked to me about these things. My parents never said any of this to me. They spent their whole lives in public institutions and knew nothing about the market economy. That the school no longer assigned us jobs was something they brought up again and again. When they talked at home about someone at work trading stocks, it sounded like a sigh, as if that person had fallen and taken the illegal road of speculation. On the other hand, an individual’s understanding is also tied to the understanding of society as a whole. If society widely cares about and discusses certain questions, individuals get inspired by it, think more, and come to understand more.

4. As soon as I entered society, I noticed my classmates changing, and the difference spread wider and sank deeper as time went on. I could never seem to complete that natural transformation of theirs. I never understood how they turned from students into adults. I suspect that while they were still students, an adult was already hidden inside their bodies, so after entering society all they had to do was peel off the student’s skin and the change was complete. When I was a student, the inside of my body was a student too. Just like an onion, however many layers you peel off, it is still an onion.

5. The urge to please everyone is blind and futile. Everyone judges others by themselves, and you can never make an insincere person believe in your sincerity. Conversely, you have no need to prove your sincerity to a sincere person. When lowly people are resentful, they only bully other lowly people, because standing up to power means suffering. And if there is truly no one left to bully, they can only mistreat animals. People often say love is blind. But to me, love is exactly what is least blind, least calculating and most true to one’s heart. Hatred, on the contrary, is what is blind.

6. Suddenly I had plenty of time, like a poor man once looked down on who strikes it rich overnight, and I could indulge in the luxury of squandering time out of revenge. I had been oppressed for so long by the so-called race against every second, my time always stretched tight like my nerves, barely enough to cope with work. Only then did I notice I had never seen Haitong Wutong Garden or Flagship Kaixuan Community at eight or nine in the morning, though I had worked in those places for more than a year. Now I arrive everywhere at different times from my old routine, so what I see and feel is different too. In fact I found myself looking at this job in a completely new way. It was not only a change of habit, or a matching change in time and space, but looking at things without a purpose, from an angle I had never tried before because of anxiety and impatience. I no longer saw myself as a delivery machine paid 30 yuan an hour, getting angry and flustered whenever I fell short of the quota.

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