Tools

I share this page with friends who are interested in learning more about the (software) tools I use. I am not affiliated with any of these companies or products. All paid products have been indicated with an asterisk (*).

↑ Time / Clarity / Output ⏳

In a world full of distractions and noise, these tools help me curate content, stay focused, organise my thoughts, and manage my time more efficiently.

  • RSS reader → Feedly Inoreader is the best RSS aggregator I’ve tried. I use an RSS reader to centralise content from blogs, newsletters, journals, and other media sources. It constantly monitors sites for new content, removing the need for you to manually check them. If you’d like to self-host, check out FreshRSS.

  • Discover new content → Refind sends you five interesting links every day, based on your preferences. It helps you find interesting articles, without overwhelming you.

  • Discover new experiences → Eventbrite is a great way to quickly find events worth your time.

  • To-do list → I use *Lunatask to track my habits and prioritise tasks with the Eisenhower Method.

  • Scheduling → Cal is the scheduling tool I recommend. It has great integrations with email clients, like Outlook and Gmail, and best of all — it’s free for individual use and open-source! *Calendly is another great option for enterprises. If you’d like to confine yourself to the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, consider *Microsoft Bookings.

  • Faster emails → if you want a faster & more refined email experience, consider *Hey or *Superhuman. If you’re more privacy-conscious, see below.

  • Faster calendars → *Vimcal is Superhuman for calendars. It integrates seamlessly with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. Cron (acquired by Notion) is another great option. Alternatively, consider a private calendar.

  • Collaborative meetings → Around (acquired by Miro) is a simple video conferencing tool. Its floating video popups feel less clunky than competitors’ UIs and allow you to maximise your screen real estate!

  • Distraction-free Youtube → the Unhook for Chrome and Unhook for Firefox browser extensions allow you to hide different elements of the YouTube web application, such as the Trending tab.

  • Browser organiser → if you routinely have 100s of browser tabs open, consider using Tab Manager Plus for Chrome or Tab Manager Plus for Firefox. It’s free, open-source, and has an attractive privacy policy. You may also want to consider Session Buddy or *Workona.

  • Structured thoughts & writing → Notion is my go-to all-in-one workspace. Best of all, they have a free education tier (for students and teachers).

  • Unstructured thoughts & writing → Logseq is a beautiful blend of markdown, org-mode and, knowledge graph. Think of it as a free and open-source roam-research. Write down your unstructured thoughts, and with time you’ll start to see connections between your notes you didn’t know existed.

  • Professional writing → if English is not your first language (or frankly, even if it is), consider using a grammar checker for professional writing and emails. *Grammarly is great but I’d also recommend *LanguageTool and *Antidote.

  • Academic and technical writing → consider *Trinka. I also like The Hemingway App which highlights lengthy, complex, and weak sentences — use it if you’re prone to academese. For scientific & technical publishing, see here.

  • LaTeX → *Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor and an indispensable tool for academic writing. If you’re curious, learn LaTeX.

  • Geocodes → addresses are cumbersome and insufficiently specific. For example, I may be meeting a friend at a train station, but a typical address will probably not specify which entrance we should meet at. Resolution-related problems like these only get worse once you leave an urban area. What3words divides the world into 3x3m squares and makes it easier to communicate location information. For example, my office is at ///noisy.gains.many. Google Plus Codes are a slightly less fun (but open-source) alternative based on Open Location Code. In Plus Code language, I work at 9C3XFRXF+PQ.



Privacy & Security 🕳️🐇

Being privacy-conscious doesn’t mean you have to completely stop sharing data. Nor does it necessarily mean that you have to de-Amazon, de-Apple, de-Google, de-Meta, and de-Microsoft your life. I love, and use, products from each one of these companies. It simply means being mindful of the risks posed by unwanted intrusions from companies, criminals, and states — and taking steps to mitigate those risks. This also means being considerate of others’ data and doing what you can to protect it.

This is a brief guide on how to be a little more privacy- and security-conscious while leading a close-to-normal online and offline life.

PrivacyTools.io is a wonderful knowledge-base for privacy. Check it out for a more advanced guide. Also consider Awesome-Privacy, a curated list of privacy-preserving tools.

The Mozilla Foundation created the Privacy Not Included buyer’s guide. Use it to see where the products you use fall on the ‘Creep-O-Meter’.

  • Password manager - Bitwarden (free for personal use) → I put this at the top of this list for good reason. This is probably the single easiest addition you can make to significantly improve your online security.

  • Faster & safer internet → Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 is a free, fast, more private public DNS resolver. NextDNS is another fantastic option.

  • Web browser - Brave → privacy-oriented browser, based on Chromium with fantastic ad, tracker and cookie consent banner blocking. Significantly (~2x) faster than Chrome in my tests. Brave is available on desktop and mobile. If anonymity is essential, consider Tor.

  • Virtual private network (VPN) → *NordVPN is the most reliable VPN I’ve tried. It also supports the WireGuard protocol (“NordLynx”). If you’re more privacy-conscious, I’d recommend *Mullvad VPN.

  • Anonymity → if anonymity is a principal concern, consider using the Tor network. Whonix is a privacy-centric operating system that runs in a virtual machine (i.e. it runs like any desktop app on Windows, macOS, or Linux) and forces all web traffic through the Tor Network. You may also wish to compartmentalise your digital life. Tails is a tool which allows you to carry a portable & secure operating system on a USB. Plug in a Tails-equipped USB stick into any computer and temporarily turn it into a secure machine.

  • Alternate web frontends → there are countless interfaces which redirect your website traffic through an alternate privacy-friendly frontend application. For example, you may use Invidious to access YouTube or Libreddit to access Reddit.

  • Maps → OpenStreetMap provides global map data under an open license. It powers thousands of applications including the offline map app OsmAnd and the privacy-conscious Organic Maps.

  • Personal messaging → Signal, Session, and *Threema are great! These services provide privacy and security but not anonymity. Please note that while Telegram has a great UI/UX i.e. it’s easy to convince your friends to join, contrary to popular opinion, it has poor privacy and security practices.

  • Group messaging → Element is a (potentially) great messaging option for groups (e.g. communities and enterprises) if you want a more privacy-preserving experience than traditional group chat applications. It’s based on the Matrix open standard and can be self-hosted.

  • Email for privacy → consider Protonmail, Tutanota, or Fastmail.

  • Temporary emails & phone numbers → if you hate handing out your personal information when signing up for something trivial, consider using an email masking service such as Firefox Relay or an email alias generator, like AnonAddy. Please read the FAQs thoroughly before use. Similar services exist for temporary mobile numbers. If you’re in the US, *Burner is a great option.

  • Disposable payment cards → online banks like Revolut and Monzo allow you to easily generate one-off virtual cards, which you can later delete.

  • Online content removal → it is not uncommon to find content about yourself online that you want removed. You can attempt to contact a website’s webmaster, but this often leads nowhere. One easy way of reducing the visibility of this content is to ask Google to remove it from Google Search.

  • Request access to your data → several of the largest tech companies have improved their privacy policies. One change includes permitting users to easily request access to their user data (and requesting this data be deleted). This is required by law (GDPR) in Europe. If you’re curious about what data any one company holds about you, just ask!

  • Microsoft Windows → if you’ve used a recent version of Windows, you’ll note that advertising and excessive data collection are core features of the operating system. I’d recommend switching to Linux, but understand that many people are unable to do so (e.g. because they need specific software packages). In these cases, consider debloating Windows and changing its privacy settings. Consider using one or more of the following tools: Windows-Privacy-Dashboard, optimizer, Win-Debloat-Tools, privatezilla, WindowsSpyBlocker, Sophia-Script-for-Windows, ShutUp10++.

  • Apple macOS → contrary to popular belief, Apple devices are not immune from viruses, malware and, other security/privacy threats. macOS suffers from many of the same problems as Windows. Consider using, the unfortunately named, privacy-sexy tool or the macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide. You could also switch to Linux.

  • Mobile operating system → phones are arguably even more privacy-invasive than desktop computers; there are online guides on how to change your privacy settings on Android and iOS. If you have an Android phone, consider changing your mobile operating system to LineageOS. Perhaps paradoxically, Google Pixel devices are very hardware-secure. If you have one, consider switching to GrapheneOS or CalyxOS for an improved privacy experience.

  • Privacy-conscious mobile app alternatives → if you care about your privacy on your smartphone, consider reviewing your privacy permissions on commonly used apps. If you find an app intrusive, search for privacy-conscious alternatives! You may be surprised by what you find. For example, Drip is a menstruation (period) tracking app with an attractive privacy policy! F-Droid is an alternative to the Google Play Store which provides a catalogue of strictly free and open-source software applications.

  • Firewall → NetGuard is firewall app for Android. Use it to block specific applications from accessing the internet.

  • Block mobile app trackers → TrackerControl allows you to monitor and control hidden data collection in mobile apps on Android.

  • Mobile keyboard → changing your phone’s operating system might seem daunting, but one simple change you can make is changing your keyboard from the default Android keyboard to something like AnySoftKeyboard or OpenBoard (note: the latter was removed from the Googla Play Store but remains available via F-Droid).

  • Smartwatches → wearable devices are often overlooked as a risk to privacy. I love my Fitbit but recognise its privacy issues. If you’re purchasing a smartwatch, check out AsteroidOS and Gadgetbridge.

  • Offline data storage → if you have a portable hard drive or USB, consider encrypting the disk with a tool like VeraCrypt.

  • Online data storage → Nextcloud is an open-source file storage & communication platform, which may be self-hosted (or hosted in the cloud with a provider of your choice). This is appropriate for individuals and enterprises alike. In my case, I’ve used it to host research data on-site, in a regulatory setting where the team was not permitted to host data off-site. It was easy to set up and has an intuitive user interface.



Technical Tools 👨‍💻

This section is probably most useful to developers and other people in STEM.

  • Scientific and technical publishing → if you want to author and publish (blog posts, articles, presentations, or books) directly from a Jupyter Notebook with code, equations, and interactive data visualisation, check out Quarto. It works with Python, R, Julia, and Observable JS!

  • Linux → Pop!_OS is my favourite Linux distribution, and the one I generally recommend to people who are new to Linux (unless they have a specific need e.g. cybersecurity → Kali Linux). It is developed by System76, an American computer manufacturer, and is essentially Ubuntu under the hood. It is the most cohesive Linux operating system I’ve tried! If you use Windows or macOS, see above.

  • Compartmentalise your (digital) life → Qubes OS is a security-oriented operating system which leverages Xen-based virtualisation to generate many virtual machines. Each (OS) instance, or qube may be a different operating system, with different application/network stacks and varying levels of trust. This approach allows you to compartmentalise different aspects of your digital presence on a single machine. If anonymity & privacy are key concerns, check out Tor.

  • Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) → if you’re building an app for Android, iOS, or the web, consider Supabase for your backend. In their own words, it’s “the open-source alternative to Firebase”. This is the most elegant BaaS I’ve come across. Supabase offers authentication, file storage, (edge) functions, and database management. It is strictly comprised of open-source components (e.g. PostgreSQL) and this means you could containerise your application with something like Docker and host it on a cloud platform of your choice — thereby avoiding vendor lock-in. If you want a serverless MySQL database instead, check out PlanetScale.

  • Web analytics → *Plausible is a lightweight, open-source, and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It is hosted in the EU, does not serve cookies, and is GDPR/CCPA/PECR compliant. Best of all, you can self-host on any server with Docker! Umami and Clouflare Web Analytics are also great options.

  • Comments widget → *Commento is the privacy-preserving alternative to Disqus and Facebook Comments. If your audience is primarily composed of programmers, consider Utterances.

  • DataFrame library → if you use the Pandas (Python) library for data wrangling/analysis, consider switching to Polars. It is an extremely fast alternative built on Apache Arrow and implemented in Rust. If you’re curious, check out this side-by-side comparison and the docs. Pandas 2.0 launched in April 2023 and is now, like Polars, based on Apache Arrow instead of NumPy! Here's a fun write-up on key changes.

    Pandas 2.0 vs. Polars
    Pandas' ecosystem is more mature but in my early tests, Polars still outperforms Pandas (2.0.0). If you're considering updating a legacy codebase from Pandas 1 to 2, note that there are breaking changes (release notes). The docs recommend first updating to Pandas 1.5.3 to ensure your code does not generate FutureWarning or DeprecationWarning messages. If you use Arrow types, converting between Pandas and Polars should be trivial — try both!
    Polars' author Ritchie Vink says, “Polars will remain faster & more memory-efficient:

    • Polars adheres to arrow's memory format, but is a complete vectorized query engine written in Rust;
    • multi-threaded – almost all operations are multi-threaded and share a single threadpool that has low contention (not multiprocessing!); Polars can completely saturate all your CPU cores with useful work;
    • out-of-core – Polars can process datasets much larger than RAM;
    • lazy – Polars optimizes your queries and materializes much less data;
    • completely written in Rust – Polars controls every performance critical operation and doesn't have to defer to third parties, this allows it to have tight control over performance and memory;
    • zero-required dependencies – this greatly reduces latency;
    • declarative and strict API – Polars doesn't adhere to the pandas API because we think it is suboptimal for a performant OLAP library.”
      •

      (source)

  • Vim everywhere → if you’d like to use Vim keybindings in every facet of your life, check out this extensive list of programmes which support Vim. I’d highly recommend Vimium, a browser extension that provides keyboard shortcuts for navigation and control. If you use Firefox, try Tridactyl instead. If you don’t use Vim but are curious — learn Vim.