Boris Smus
Personal site of Boris Smus — essays on software and interaction design, projects, and notes on the books he reads.
- Posts
- 402 from 20 Sep 2018 to 21 Oct 2026
- Posting
- weekly (24 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
- Feed
- https://smus.com/atom.xml
2026 21
- Ten months of Alloy: local where it counts
- Outsourcing to the Gods
- We Are as Gods, We Are as Cogs
- Anarchy’s Middle Managers
- TRIZ and the Elusive Invention Machine
- Defying Financial Gravity
- Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman
- Good Inside by Becky Kennedy
- The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley
- Invention Cards 3.0: Stories
- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
- supernote-cli: pen, paper, and a pipe
- The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
- Breath by James Nestor
- Definitely Maybe by The Strugatskys
- The Way of Man by Martin Buber
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
- Alloy: a local-first AI workbench
- The Score by C. Thi Nguyen
- In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
- Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
2025 18
- Local e-ink handwriting recognition with on-device VLMs
- The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han
- Livewired by David Eagleman
- Monkey by Arthur Waley
- The pursuit of frictionless capture
- Hard to Be a God by The Strugatskys
- Battle of Maldon & Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
- Piranesi by Susanne Clark
- Secret of our Success by Joseph Henrich
- Math from Three to Seven by A. K. Zvonkin
- Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
- VALIS by Phillip K. Dick
- The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut
- Large and sometimes Oppressive Language Models (LOLs)
- A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
- Horsing around with invention.cards
- Invention & Discovery Cards work complete
- John Dee and the Empire of Angels by Jason Louv
2024 14
- Use of Weapons by Iain Banks
- Unintended Consequences of False Equity
- When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
- Seattle Public Schools accountability problem
- Absolutely On Music by Haruki Murakami
- Neurobiology of We by Daniel Siegel
- Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
- Blindsight by Peter Watts
- Invention Cards enhanced by AI
- The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel
- Visual Chronology of Science & Discovery 2.0
- Telejam: Interplanetary Musical Ensembles Feb 2024
- Project Exupery Jan 2024
- Nine Links for Fall 2023 Jan 2024
2023 4
2022 14
- Links for November 2022 Nov 2022
- Links for October 2022 Oct 2022
- Semantic Similarity for Note Taking Oct 2022
- Links for September 2022 Sep 2022
- Links for August 2022 Aug 2022
- AI note garden: Dreamer, note collider Aug 2022
- Links for July 2022 Jul 2022
- Links for June 2022 Jun 2022
- Links for May 2022 May 2022
- Links for April 2022 Apr 2022
- Links for March 2022 Mar 2022
- Links for February 2022 Feb 2022
- Links for January 2022 Jan 2022
- AI note garden: link suggestions Jan 2022
2021 5
2020 4
2019 7
2018 1
Undated 314
- long form
- shorter notes
- worthwhile books
- ☆ Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer May 2024
- ☆ A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold Apr 2024
- Disappearance of Ritual by Byung-Chul Han Apr 2024
- ☆ Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman Apr 2024
- ☆ Mystery Teachings by J. M. Greer Mar 2024
- Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis Mar 2024
- ☆ David: The Divided Heart by David Wolpe Feb 2024
- ☆ Every Life is on Fire by Jeremy England Feb 2024
- ☆ End of the World by Peter Zeihan Jan 2024
- Great Work Of Time by John Crowley Dec 2023
- ☆ Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor by Halevi Dec 2023
- ☆ Tales from the Ant World by E. O. Wilson Nov 2023
- ☆ The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han Oct 2023
- ☆ This is How You Lose the Time War Oct 2023
- Empowered by Cagan & Jones Sep 2023
- ☆ Russian Revolutions by Mike Duncan Jul 2023
- ☆ The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler Jul 2023
- ☆ Boyd by Robert Coram Jun 2023
- ☆ Medieval Robots by E. R. Truitt Mar 2023
- ☆ Old Man's War by John Scalzi Jan 2023
- ☆ The Sabbath by Heschel Dec 2022
- ☆ Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips Dec 2022
- ☆ The Timeless Way of Building Nov 2022
- ☆ The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile Oct 2022
- ☆ The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury Oct 2022
- ☆ Wild Problems by Russ Roberts Sep 2022
- ☆ Forever Flowing by Vasily Grossman Sep 2022
- ☆ The Goal - A Business Graphic Novel Aug 2022
- The Secret Life of Groceries Aug 2022
- ☆ Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder Jul 2022
- ☆ Parables by Franz Kafka Jul 2022
- Arcadia by Tom Stoppard Jun 2022
- ☆ Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Jun 2022
- ☆ The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov May 2022
- ☆ Genesis by ✨ translated by Robert Alter May 2022
- Ministry for the Future Apr 2022
- ☆ Grand Transitions by Vaclav Smil Apr 2022
- Practical Doomsday by Michal Zalewski Jan 2022
- ☆ A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers Jan 2022
- ☆ Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter Nov 2021
- ☆ Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide Nov 2021
- ☆ The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef Oct 2021
- History of Future Cities by Daniel Brook Oct 2021
- ☆ The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber Sep 2021
- ABC by Illich and Sanders Sep 2021
- ☆ Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Aug 2021
- ☆ Gardener & Carpenter by Alison Gopnik Aug 2021
- ☆ Late Middle Ages Jul 2021
- ☆ Medieval Technology and Social Change Jun 2021
- ☆ Understanding Complexity by Scott Page Jun 2021
- Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks Jun 2021
- Why Information Grows by Cesar Hidalgo May 2021
- ☆ Emotional Life of the Toddler May 2021
- ☆ High Middle Ages May 2021
- Thirteenth Tribe Apr 2021
- ☆ Early Middle Ages Mar 2021
- ☆ Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned Mar 2021
- ☆ How to Take Smart Notes Feb 2021
- ☆ Thinking in Systems: A Primer Feb 2021
- ☆ Sid Meier's Memoir! Jan 2021
- ☆ Profiles of the Future by Arthur C. Clarke Dec 2020
- ☆ Dune by Frank Herbert Dec 2020
- ☆ Night by Elie Wiesel Nov 2020
- ☆ Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich Oct 2020
- ☆ Frank Herbert by Tim O’Reilly Oct 2020
- ☆ Story of Us by Tim Urban Sep 2020
- ☆ Rewiring America Sep 2020
- ☆ Братья Карамазовы, читает Ульянов Sep 2020
- ☆ Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson Aug 2020
- ☆ The Road by Cormac McCarthy Jul 2020
- ☆ Red Plenty by Francis Spufford Jun 2020
- Shadow of the Torturer May 2020
- ☆ Selected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick Apr 2020
- ☆ Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson Apr 2020
- ☆ Lost Enlightenment by Frederick Starr Apr 2020
- ☆ Debt: The First 5000 Years Mar 2020
- Revenge of Analog Feb 2020
- The Circle by Dave Eggers Feb 2020
- Fatherhood in Pieces by Chabon Jan 2020
- Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman Jan 2020
- The Right It (audio) Dec 2019
- The Name of the Wind (audio) Nov 2019
- ☆ The Fiddler is a Good Woman Nov 2019
- ☆ Range by David Epstein (audio) Nov 2019
- ☆ Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud (audio) Oct 2019
- Yes Brain by Siegel and Bryson Sep 2019
- ☆ Diamond Age by Stephenson (audio) Sep 2019
- ☆ Hyperion by Dan Simmons (audio) Aug 2019
- Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich Jul 2019
- ☆ Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery Jul 2019
- Palaces for the People (audio) Jun 2019
- ☆ The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson (audio) Jun 2019
- ☆ The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin May 2019
- Radical Markets by Posner and Weyl Apr 2019
- ☆ Seeing Like a State by James Scott Mar 2019
- ☆ Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino Feb 2019
- ☆ The Story of Medieval England (audio) Feb 2019
- Real Estate and Cash Flow Feb 2019
- ☆ The New Father Feb 2019
- ☆ Tribe by Sebastian Junger Jan 2019
- 12 Rules for Life Jan 2019
- Building a Bridge to the 18th Century Jan 2019
- ☆ Infinite Planets Jan 2019
- ☆ Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam Nov 2018
- The Shape of Tomorrow by George Soule Nov 2018
- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott Nov 2018
- ☆ The Fall and Rise of China (audio) Oct 2018
- ☆ War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin Oct 2018
- ☆ Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin (audio) Sep 2018
- ☆ Book of Why by Judea Pearl Sep 2018
- ☆ Living the French Revolution (audio) Sep 2018
- Against retweets Sep 2018
- Make twitter great again? Sep 2018
- Lynched on Twitter Aug 2018
- ☆ Tao of Philosophy by Alan Watts Aug 2018
- The difficult middle Jul 2018
- Bad Blood by John Carreyrou Jul 2018
- ☆ Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (audio) Jul 2018
- Required reading for VR enthusiasts Jun 2018
- You Belong to the Universe (audio) May 2018
- Balancing technological pessimism May 2018
- Unsong by Scott Alexander May 2018
- ☆ Reason in Human Affairs by Herbert Simon Apr 2018
- ☆ The Fourth Turning by Howe and Strauss Apr 2018
- How rationalists can win Apr 2018
- The Coffee-House: A Cultural History Apr 2018
- ☆ Player of Games by Iain M. Banks Mar 2018
- Skin in the Game by Taleb (audio) Mar 2018
- ☆ The Modern Political Tradition: Hobbes to Habermas Mar 2018
- ☆ Scale by Geoffrey West Feb 2018
- Anthem by Ayn Rand Jan 2018
- ☆ Impro by Keith Johnstone Jan 2018
- Web-based voice command recognition Jan 2018
- ☆ The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang Jan 2018
- Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos Dec 2017
- Audio features for web-based ML Dec 2017
- ☆ My Russian Grandmother... by Meir Shalev Nov 2017
- UIST 2017 highlights Oct 2017
- ☆ The neurochemistry of music Oct 2017
- Memento Mori Oct 2017
- ☆ On the Shortness of Life Oct 2017
- ☆ Stories of Your Life and Others Sep 2017
- ☆ Nothing is True and Everything is Possible Sep 2017
- Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Aug 2017
- A respectful truce? Aug 2017
- Filter playground Aug 2017
- The end of endings Jul 2017
- ☆ Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand Jul 2017
- Intelligence, aliens, and self-improvement Jul 2017
- ☆ The Psychology of Curiosity Jun 2017
- Convincing the inconvincible Jun 2017
- Climate metaquiz results Jun 2017
- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder Jun 2017
- ☆ Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Jun 2017
- Viewpoint tolerance through curiosity Jun 2017
- Remembering my personal wiki Jun 2017
- Short posts using split Markdown May 2017
- Analogies from the industrial revolution May 2017
- Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse May 2017
- ☆ Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari May 2017
- ☆ Understanding Japan: A Cultural History (audio) May 2017
- ☆ The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant Apr 2017
- ☆ The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin Mar 2017
- ☆ Deep Work by Cal Newport Mar 2017
- Debaters: friendly disagreement Mar 2017
- ☆ Mindstorms by Seymour Papert Feb 2017
- Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff Feb 2017
- Headlines, meet sparklines: news in context Feb 2017
- Tools for making better decisions Feb 2017
- ☆ The Futurological Congress by Stanislav Lem Jan 2017
- ☆ On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi by William Tenn Jan 2017
- ☆ Superforecasters by Phil Tetlock Jan 2017
- ☆ Why Teach Thinking by Jonathan Baron Dec 2016
- Front page blues Dec 2016
- ☆ Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Nov 2016
- VR View 2.0: JavaScript API Nov 2016
- Election 2016 Nov 2016
- ☆ Future Babble Oct 2016
- I Am A Strange Loop Oct 2016
- Ray Input: WebVR interaction patterns Oct 2016
- ☆ The Hedgehog and the Fox Sep 2016
- ☆ Sapiens (audio) Sep 2016
- ☆ How to Actually Change Your Mind by Big Yud Aug 2016
- ☆ Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming Aug 2016
- Copresence in WebVR Aug 2016
- The Persuaders (audio) Jul 2016
- ☆ The Righteous Mind by Jon Haidt Jul 2016
- Must Mankind Repeat History's Great Mistakes Jul 2016
- ☆ The Man Who Loved Only Numbers Jul 2016
- ☆ Mother of All Demos Jun 2016
- ☆ The One Minute Manager Jun 2016
- ☆ Gantenbein by Max Frisch Jun 2016
- ☆ Physics Beyond the Edge (audio) Jun 2016
- Inspirata: for what inspires you May 2016
- Browsing Wikipedia in VR May 2016
- ☆ Great Ideas of Philosophy (audio) May 2016
- How to Fail at Almost Everything by Scott Adams Apr 2016
- Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Apr 2016
- Three approaches to VR lens distortion Apr 2016
- Embedding VR content on the web Mar 2016
- ☆ The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris Mar 2016
- ☆ A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr Feb 2016
- Simulating wealth inequality Jan 2016
- ☆ In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell Dec 2015
- ☆ Gateway by Frederik Pohl Dec 2015
- ☆ Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner Nov 2015
- Sensor fusion and motion prediction Nov 2015
- The United States and the Middle East (audio) Oct 2015
- Hot bread: delicious or deadly? Sep 2015
- Science and Human Values Sep 2015
- ☆ Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahnemann & Tversky Sep 2015
- UbiComp and ISWC 2015 Sep 2015
- Magnetic Input for Mobile VR Sep 2015
- ☆ Skeptic's Guide to American History (audio) Aug 2015
- Digital Signal Processing Coursera Jul 2015
- ☆ Understanding the Secrets of Human Perception (audio) Jun 2015
- Site redesign, version five Jun 2015
- ☆ John Napier - Hands May 2015
- Vernor Vinge - Rainbow's End Apr 2015
- Blue Mind Mar 2015
- Spatial audio and web VR Mar 2015
- Responsive WebVR, headset optional Feb 2015
- Web Sensor API: raw and uncut Nov 2014
- UIST 2014 highlights Oct 2014
- Spectrogram and oscillator Jun 2014
- Addressable apps May 2014
- The ebb of the web Apr 2014
- Remote controls for web media Jan 2014
- UIST 2013 highlights Oct 2013
- Responsive image workflow Sep 2013
- Ultrasonic networking on the web Aug 2013
- Easier link blogging Jul 2013
- Installable webapps: extend the sandbox Jun 2013
- Gestural music direction May 2013
- Web Audio book Mar 2013
- Really simple social syndication Mar 2013
- Interactive touch laptop experiments Feb 2013
- From VPS to static hosting Jan 2013
- Internet mashup of things Jan 2013
- Reusable JavaScript for MVC frameworks Nov 2012
- How the web should work Sep 2012
- Generalized input on the cross-device web Jun 2012
- Platform fertility: open for innovation? Jun 2012
- Let's get physical (units) May 2012
- New design Mar 2012
- Backbone and ember Feb 2012
- PDF conversion and client-side scraping Feb 2012
- A mobile web application tech stack Jan 2012
- Hybrid operating systems Nov 2011
- Stack Exchange question notifier Nov 2011
- UIST 2011 greatest hits Oct 2011
- Screen video capture for Chrome OS Oct 2011
- Loading large assets in modern HTML5 games Sep 2011
- Developing multiplayer HTML5 games with node.js Aug 2011
- Global chrome media keys with Key Socket Jul 2011
- Extending chrome developer tools Jul 2011
- OAuth 2.0 from chrome extensions Jul 2011
- Brazil trip Jun 2011
- Dynamic chrome extension icons Jun 2011
- Crunching numbers for the NHL finals May 2011
- Chrome developer tools cheatsheet May 2011
- Multi-touch for your desktop browser May 2011
- jQuery conference 2011 Apr 2011
- From Wordpress to Hyde Apr 2011
- Chrome media keyboard shortcuts Apr 2011
- Chronos: Chrome browsing metrics Mar 2011
- SXSW LEGO MINDSTORMS hackathon Mar 2011
- Soundsourcing: the sound of the crowd Feb 2011
- CrowdForge: crowdsourcing complex tasks Feb 2011
- KML tours in Google Earth Dec 2010
- Tweetbacks in JavaScript Dec 2010
- WebIntent, an Android PhoneGap plugin Nov 2010
- jQuery mobile hacker news Nov 2010
- PhoneGap games in the Android Market Nov 2010
- Chrome extension for thesixtyone Oct 2010
- The best question answering sites Oct 2010
- An onslaught of mobile HTML games Oct 2010
- Instant search in 60 lines Oct 2010
- Stairs or elevator? Use bluetooth! Sep 2010
- Skip to skip: a running gesture Aug 2010
- Minimal business card design Jul 2010
- Android-powered mindstorms Jun 2010
- Prototyping with Wii remotes in python May 2010
- Nike+ hacking with python May 2010
- Jam Hunt: friendly jam sessions Apr 2010
- CHI 2010 poster Mar 2010
- Lightweight Wordpress on Slicehost Feb 2010
- Visualizing MTurk requesters Feb 2010
- Crowdsourcing code Jan 2010
- Crowdsourcing articles with mechanical turk Jan 2010
- Ubiquitous drums Nov 2009
- Arduino-nerf mashup Oct 2009
- New design Sep 2009
- Offline web apps on the iPhone Sep 2009
- Never delete your gmail account Aug 2009
- Plotting something radial Aug 2009
- Extending Google Wave terminology Jul 2009
- Generating guitar chord diagrams Jun 2009
- Carnegie Mellon University!? Apr 2009
- Guitar Unleashed Mar 2009
- Prettifying embedded YouTube Feb 2009
- Clean drag and drop upload in Safari Feb 2009
- iPhone car kit: roll your own Feb 2009
- Performance of canvas versus SVG Jan 2009
- iWork.com feedback Jan 2009
- I see dead CSS Dec 2008
- Musical mashups in pure JavaScript Dec 2008
- Moving day Nov 2008
- Robotic piano playback Nov 2008
- The sorry state of HTML mail Oct 2008
- Top 5 sessions of Web 2.0 Expo NY Sep 2008