I'm eager to hear about your favorite things that have significantly influenced your life, work, or both! These could be essential software tools, books, physical items, art pieces, music, or similar things you cherish and find meaningful.<p>Optional Template for answer:<p>**Work**<p>**Daily life**<p>**Media**<p>Initially, I intended to post this on 28-01-2025, as it would mark a year since the last "Ask HN: What Are Your Favorite Things?" However, I believe it's better to have this thread before Christmas, as it has great potential to inspire us with better and more useful Christmas gift ideas.<p>Previously:<p>01-2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39163944 (57 comments)
I put my list here as a comment since i do not want to clutter or preload the post.<p>*Work*<p>- Walking Pad: Since i got one under my working desk i am able to walk a lot while coding which helps me a lot to stay fit<p>- local LLMs: I use several small LLMs for tasks such as filtering news for relevance... I am still completely mind-blown that these things work that well for what they are.<p>- 32" 4K OLED Monitor: I kinda like how text and colors look on this new monitor and it even allowed me to get rid of my second monitor.<p>- Desktop Speaker: They sound like wear a good pair of headphones... but without the headphones and more base<p>*Daily life*<p>- Hot Pot: Got myself a standalone induction cooking plate with an hot pot pot and having friends over and slowly eat (and cook i guess) for multiple ours with good conversations is in itself something to live for.<p>- Glasses: I do not see blurry at all but i always had the impression that it is "hard" and in some way unpleasant to focus on text for longer periods, as it turns out my eyes are very slightly miss aligned which leads them to work and readjust constantly which results in fatigue of the eyes. So i now have prism glasses which completely remove this feeling.<p>- 3D Printer: A source for a lot of fun and it is surprisingly useful for our home. I printed multiple awesome looking lamp shades and a few helper for the household.<p>- Gridfinity: A 3D printable open-source grid storage system i use to organize a lot of smaller objects<p>*Media*<p>- Comics: I did not expect to enjoy comics that much but the art in them and how they enable other ways of transporting a story is something i deeply enjoy.<p>- Dune 2: Such a great achievement i watched it 3 times this year and i am still in awe that we humans can produce beauty and depth like this.
Macbook M1 and Airpods Pro are the only ones I haven't ever considered trading back. Even the iPhone I get frustrated every 6 months.<p>I also have one "simple" 4k monitor (27") at home and another similar at work, paired with some Dell dock which works incredibly well. I usually don't use the Macbook as a secondary display, for some reason.