the type of person that listens to 10+ minutes of lexfridman ad. reads just to feel something

~ updated at: 2025-06-06T07:11:50.575Z

Little late to the party and I just finished watching Mindhunter season 2.

OMG just a fascinating gripping show.

it’s a shame netflix canceled season 3. come on @netflix you can still make it happen.

~ updated at: 2025-05-30T15:56:29.365Z

Tim Sweeney says that we gotta do a lot of different types of work to gain maturity and like don’t focus on only one type.

do a lot of things do a lot of coding a lot of practicing a lot of different styles and only then you will know the true sense of coding and then you can choose to go deep once you’ve gain mastery in all different strokes

This is super interesting coming from a hardcore engineer where specialisation seems to be the thing but craft is honed though creativity and exploration.

I’ve been listening to the epic games CEO on lexfridman, i knew that he had been against apple’s store monopoly but i did not know about his background.

I loved fortnite during its peak 2019 i think, played almost daily with friends and strangers around the internet. smooth gameplay. dont miss being headshot by noobs though.

~ updated at: 2025-05-30T12:49:44.982Z

I just got jump-scared by @GitHub.

(all I did was merge a PR to main branch)

This seems to be a bug or something in the GitHub news feed on org dashboard.

~ updated at: 2025-05-30T06:52:09.270Z

Today I learned about tee terminal command.

~ updated at: 2025-05-29T09:53:33.126Z

GitHub is down (partially)

~ updated at: 2025-05-26T09:35:59.669Z

doing something and not knowing why so is not intentional enough. either find out why or do something else.

~ updated at: 2025-05-26T03:57:55.012Z

daniel pemberton’s OST composition for guy ritchie’s king arthur movie is underrated. it’s a shame that it didn’t do well in the box office.

barring the janky boss fight, there are some really powerful moments in the movie.

~ updated at: 2025-05-25T12:22:37.183Z

optimizing for easy addition/updation/removal of integration tests

~ updated at: 2025-05-20T06:08:28.693Z

mustering the courage to write integration tests (it’s too time consuming)

~ updated at: 2025-05-19T11:20:43.930Z

optimising for not getting nerd sniped

~ updated at: 2025-05-19T08:12:14.234Z

the tendency to optimize for the wrong loss function will eventually go belly up.

~ updated at: 2025-05-19T06:20:35.472Z

if anything, llms have helped us appreciate authentic human thoughts and ideas. long way to go.

~ updated at: 2025-05-18T13:22:08.682Z

bias is a hurdle to unlearning. bias is a hurdle. bias is overfitting.

~ updated at: 2025-05-17T07:45:44.840Z

relaxing the learning muscle is a superposition problem and it needs to stop being one.

will you get back to it or will you let it go? thankfully you have agency to make this choice.

~ updated at: 2025-05-17T07:36:18.128Z

I recently stumbled upon a nice explainer of the dutch flag sorting algorithm.

via YT search feature

With this you can sort three things in one pass without using extra space.

Next time I’ll use this to sort my sock drawer (if I get the time) 😂

~ updated at: 2025-05-17T04:17:21.619Z

With inaction, entropic ruin is imminent.

~ updated at: 2025-05-16T11:27:37.151Z

you are the moat

~ updated at: 2025-05-15T11:35:39.648Z

🎶 Not me listening to Zero Eclipse instrumental by Hiroyuki Sawano on repeat

~ updated at: 2025-05-15T03:28:14.261Z

I should maintain a running notes of blogs, articles and stuff that I read.

~ updated at: 2025-05-14T14:25:30.693Z

the type of person to do things that don’t scale.

~ updated at: 2025-05-14T14:07:45.166Z

Even with technology, the Darwinian natural selection is coming into play. https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1921687346946179419/

~ updated at: 2025-05-12T02:21:06.098Z

eren jaeger was fighting an internal struggle within himself since the infamous medal ceremony oscillating between “There is no free will” and “I did all of this with my free will”.

he couldn’t take it. he needed help from Armin to digest and reconcile that he is a “slave to freedom”.

and, this was triggered by that flash back to grisha holding new born eren in his arms saying “You are free” is such a powerful cathartic moment.

yes cathartic moments in pieces of fiction is my weakness.

🏞️ Context #1 , 🏞️ Context #2 , 🏞️ Context #3 , 🏞️ Context #4 , 🏞️ Context #5

~ updated at: 2025-05-11T16:28:02.561Z

true understanding is about knowing and confidently predicting interaction and not just isolated behaviour. https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1921119501846016115/

~ updated at: 2025-05-10T08:31:06.376Z

I’m beginning to believe that a good learning process (leading to proper understanding) will emerge through a bottom up and top down encounters serendipitously.

akin to a pincer operation.

~ updated at: 2025-05-10T08:26:07.268Z

twitch dot tv but private, within the org.

this has potential to be fun, keep yourself and team accountable and be productive.

i believe there will be atleast 100 orgs that will be onboard this idea.

i didn’t google if there is already an existing solution or product for this. if yes it’s not popular enough.

~ updated at: 2025-05-10T05:11:50.010Z

something about unyielding primal rage in works of fiction that gives me goosebumps.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-05-09T17:20:07.247Z

TIL that you can initiate GitHub action workflow from local using gh client as opposed to clicking through cluncky buttons for manual runs.

This is such a productivity boost for me.

gh workflow run deploy.yml --ref main

Appalled that I didn’t look for alternatives like this sooner.

~ updated at: 2025-05-08T10:04:57.036Z

“timelines are determined by members of technical staff” should be an axiom.

~ updated at: 2025-05-07T02:46:09.894Z

finally sat down and solved a icky bug in my content publishing software. practiced by debugging muscle on a relatively legacy piece of software. felt good. thanks ipdb.

~ updated at: 2025-05-03T12:33:13.668Z

I “vibe coded” a @github action to archive my daily live feed as markdown blog posts.

This was initially done using a manually scaffolded LaunchDaemon plist on my macbook but the issue was if the device was offline (without internet connection) at the time of archiving, it would sometimes not run at all.

Debugging why plist cron jobs couldn’t run was something I didn’t want to do so I now delegated it to github actions instead.

~ updated at: 2025-05-03T11:43:25.324Z

Quoting comment on the License change of Redis from SSPL to AGPL

“I have a great deal of respect for antirez and rec[o]gnize him as a kind and benevolent member of the FOSS community, but no matter what Redis, Inc. announced or does, they have lost my trust for good, and I will continue to use Redis forks for as long as they exist.”

via HN

loss of trust is a one way door . Once you cross it, in most situations it’s hard to get back and needs incredible effort and sacrifice to gain back lost trust.

Integrity on the fly is important. I know that things won’t be smooth sailing always and the absurdist in us agrees that we may have to take decisions that we ideally won’t.

that is exactly why decision makers need to have skin in the game on the long run.

~ updated at: 2025-05-02T04:49:52.220Z

I really hope vibe coding stops after going from zero to one.

The term vibe engineering sends shivers down my spine but one man’s fear is another man’s opportunity.

When push comes to shove, we must be able to turn a vibe coded product to a well engineered sound product and business.

…or am I being myopic about all this?

~ updated at: 2025-04-28T01:37:09.021Z

overthinking is anticipating the nth order effect of an action or lack thereof.

overthinking often collapses to a delusion. then, emotional turmoil.

instead, how about we try to stack actions that seem to yield only positive growth regardless of feedbacks leading to different nth order effects?

then, we’re just indirectly limiting decisions to 1st order effects only make things easier on the mind. This curtails overthinking & its negative effects by several orders.

Not speaking for positive effects of overthinking cuz it’s not productive 😅 for me.

~ updated at: 2025-04-25T08:29:05.399Z

For the long term, it’s important to know what is actually going on because a project is subject to modifications and extensions.

Speaking of extensions and modifications, vibe coding on the other hand calls for complete rewrite and, though A.I could eventually do a complete rewrite to support further updates. It feels we’re disrespecting the G.P.U.s and resources to get things done in a suboptimal way (if you will).

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1915581920022585597

~ updated at: 2025-04-25T03:33:43.901Z

intellectually stimulating problems to solve rather than burdens to bear

~ updated at: 2025-04-22T05:55:14.405Z

I got caught off guard LMAO 🤣

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-04-20T17:20:07.554Z

I came across a post that sheds light on the origin of VIM: https://pikuma.com/blog/origins-of-vim-text-editor

~ updated at: 2025-04-19T10:36:41.816Z

an A.I. fine-tuned to make your pool of engineers efficient and faster every day.

~ updated at: 2025-04-18T12:10:16.812Z

scrolling social media is like incentivising perpetual ephemeral thoughts and ideas.

ideally one should gain something out of it but we ignore going deeper into certain interesting thoughts and instead, keep surfing 🏄

that is not why we should use social media.

posters are getting something done and posting about it but consumers are just window-shopping (weird way to put it)

~ updated at: 2025-04-18T04:28:15.490Z

I’m strangely attracted to the idea of commit driven development.

Break down the task into list of commits annotated by the commit messages in great detail.

Tackle each of them in sequence.

It helps me keep stick to commit message while doing the changes.

It’s like a todo list but specific to low level implementation details.

~ updated at: 2025-04-17T07:15:58.092Z

maybe my job at the end of the day is to decrease entropy.

~ updated at: 2025-04-14T11:58:36.192Z

Make moves to bring about positive change instead of proving / disproving existing data points about results of the moves pool (not a pool as it’s unbounded)

~ updated at: 2025-04-09T03:36:32.146Z

I came across a post by @DHH about hiring developers¹. I opened it and this piece hit hard:

Maybe it sounds a little harsh, but a programmer who’s been working professionally for five years has likely already revealed their potential. What you’re going to get is roughly what you see. That doesn’t mean that people can’t get better after that, but it means that the trajectory by which they improve has already been plotted.

~ updated at: 2025-04-09T03:28:56.281Z

“low level execution punctuated by high level calibration”

~ updated at: 2025-04-09T03:24:46.553Z

it suddenly struck me that sustained self vigilance stops becoming a battle with the elimination of self imposed, limiting lens and that trigger to change isn’t always a moment in time but can be (and is initially) relentless sustained vigilance across several contiguous moments in time.

~ updated at: 2025-04-06T08:42:39.893Z

working on the slopes instead of the y-intercepts is the secret to optimism.

~ updated at: 2025-04-06T08:19:57.893Z

I witnessed a guy build a functional piano in his FPS game.

This dude is a legend. You have to leave being inspired.

https://www.youtube.com/live/ys5hays0TYo

~ updated at: 2025-04-06T04:28:01.471Z

whatever the equivalent of this is in your field

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-04-04T06:30:05.784Z

notes to self based on what i’ve observed:

if you think you’re slipping up often, try to spend more time and energy staying as low level as possible.

low level execution punctuated by high level calibration.

~ updated at: 2025-03-31T04:20:01.843Z

I came across an impressive thing while sipping my morning coffee.

A dude behind a twitter account (@PJaccetturo) generated the ‘Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring’ trailer in the style of Studio Ghibli (and it’s pretty impressive to reiterate).

The A.I. Filmmaker shared how the trailer was made.

My process was: Screenshot all 102 shots in the trailer Remix them to Ghibli style in @OpenAI’s Sora Animate in @Kling_ai and @LumaLabsAI

Re-edit in sync with trailer.

I’m attaching a hyperlink to the tweet that contains the generated trailer: https://x.com/PJaccetturo/status/1905151190872309907

Right now, it’s possible to do incredible stuff by duct-taping a bunch of tools together. I only see this method getting easier and easier as more people do nice and wholesome things with them.

~ updated at: 2025-03-28T03:37:56.858Z

the only way around a problem is through it.

~ updated at: 2025-03-27T05:59:43.108Z

so much to do, so little time…

~ updated at: 2025-03-27T03:11:29.824Z

The cost of doing code reviews is the obligatory burden of the whole context loaded in your brain before you start reviewing.

I try to take it as a self enforceable rule. It’s the least you can do.

It’s crazy that this has to be explicit.

~ updated at: 2025-03-25T09:35:22.557Z

While skimming through Simon’s list of posts¹, I realised that I’ve found the term that I’d been looking for – “Semantic Diffusion” (where the original idea/meaning dampens with time/loose adoption)

Semantic diffusion occurs when you have a word that is coined by a person or group, often with a pretty good definition, but then gets spread through the wider community in a way that weakens that definition. This weakening risks losing the definition entirely - and with it any usefulness to the term.

~ updated at: 2025-03-25T07:25:35.323Z

I stumbled upon (by the magic of the internet) this piece on Agency.

High Agency in 30 Minutes

One can use it as a compass 🧭 (perspective wise) while solving hard problems / making decisions.

~ updated at: 2025-03-25T07:22:59.751Z

Suhail shares his playbook on building A.I. powered products and services:

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1903812003757736086/

~ updated at: 2025-03-23T15:05:09.438Z

that feeling when two orgs. you like because (they’re technically awesome) start throwing sh*t at each other

🏞️ Context #1 , 🏞️ Context #2

~ updated at: 2025-03-23T06:19:32.201Z

I’ve always had an appreciation to teams that ship products and features at an incredible pace. I’ve always thought it’s possible to do it without making mistakes. Still do.

~ updated at: 2025-03-23T04:14:47.888Z

The new research on using F.F.T. based optimization could help in making L.L.M.s faster, cheaper and able to handle longer contexts.

Linking the arxiv paper here: https://bagel.ink/c/kBT5Uw

~ updated at: 2025-03-22T16:06:20.417Z

linking original FFT paper.

An Algorithm for the Machine Calculation of Complex Fourier Series: https://bagel.ink/c/74YPp0

~ updated at: 2025-03-22T15:36:08.316Z

optimizing for cathartic experiences

~ updated at: 2025-03-09T13:01:37.731Z

Writing tests to validate your understanding of a piece of code should be something I must do more.

~ updated at: 2025-03-08T04:07:59.254Z

I’m seeing an increasing amount of x posts as ads. These are just random posts that don’t seem to sell or influence actively. These are just (seemingly) random posts about random stuff. What is the goal? gain a following through relatability? bizarre.

~ updated at: 2025-02-23T16:36:09.957Z

TIL what a .har file is (and how to generate them) https://tnvmadhav.me/til/http-archiving/

~ updated at: 2025-02-23T12:30:02.857Z

“If you think like a noob, you’re a noob” - GeoHotz

good advice.

~ updated at: 2025-02-23T09:11:15.933Z

just when i thought the x algorithm was doing a good job for me, it started to raid my timeline with posts from one account that I might’ve spent a couple of more seconds on than I should’ve.

(it was a robotics based post)

~ updated at: 2025-02-23T04:33:08.657Z

Really good blog post by Harper Reed: https://harper.blog/2025/02/16/my-llm-codegen-workflow-atm/

~ updated at: 2025-02-22T12:30:03.071Z

TIL about an in-built browser feature in V.S. Code (and likely why I didn’t know about it sooner) https://tnvmadhav.me/til/vscode-has-a-simple-browser/

~ updated at: 2025-02-22T09:39:28.519Z

I’d like to vouch for a tool that has contributed to my significant productivity boost (as a developer).

I’ve been using the lazygit C.L.I. tool on my machine and with a certain hotkey combo, the whole standard GIT ops (to ship changes) has been pleasurable.

~ updated at: 2025-02-22T09:36:07.369Z

“If you think like a noob, you’re a noob” - GeoHotz

good advice.

~ updated at: 2025-02-22T04:59:48.613Z

I should read the SOCK protocol https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1928

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-02-21T08:30:22.221Z

🎧😌🎶 Listening to ‘Light no Theme’ by Hideki Taniuchi

Simple yet a banger.

~ updated at: 2025-02-10T13:55:37.501Z

Generative A.I. models are a result of capturing & reproducing expertise from a moment in time.

Instead of vertices, the edges’ scaler properties are replicated with the statistical preface.

So zooming out, this could be viewed as / an apparent attempt to recreate a time machine gone wrong, or just having reached a local maximum, if you will.

~ updated at: 2025-02-10T03:00:24.572Z

“An idea like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself” - Charles Dickens

~ updated at: 2025-02-08T12:30:03.057Z

🎧🧑‍💻 Listening to ‘Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT’ by Andrej Karpathy¹

~ updated at: 2025-02-08T07:46:01.447Z

🎧😌🧘🎶 listening to ‘To Give a Marionette Life’ by Yoshihisa Hirano

~ updated at: 2025-02-06T12:04:31.477Z

asking yourself “what would carmack do?”

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-02-01T16:41:15.772Z

But to increase collective IQ (rather than collective output), there needs to be something else.

— Think about problems differently than they’re used to

— For people who want to grind and solve problems in a better way, you now have a infinitely patient copilot/agent to help you complete the journey that you couldn’t complete before

— So, Intrinsic motivation is also necessary

— People need to start believing in increased individual agency and gain hunger to do things better

— Seems like we’re gonna be stuck in a local maxima otherwise https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1885560914000437650/

~ updated at: 2025-02-01T05:37:26.664Z

plain text only interaction for only those who prefer it.

For full utilisation, app layer innovation is the key (to support a larger part of market). https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1885179324224925752/

~ updated at: 2025-02-01T05:28:50.825Z

so much to do so little time…

~ updated at: 2025-01-31T07:06:42.798Z

List of phrases from lives of high agency people:

you can just do things you need to be more delusional it’s time to build don’t ask for permission move fast and break things the quick shall inherit the earth live players go direct founder mode man in the arena don’t die ¹ —- does it defy the laws of physics? there’s no unsolvable problem everything is a skill issue adults don’t exist there’s no way all normal behaviour is forgotten. only weird behaviour survives. one giant game of Roy optimise for the best story the amygdala is outdated hardware experiments > decisions end of day > end of week what have you got done this week? what is ignored by the media that will be studied by historians? questions are the answers you might need have you tried just doing the thing 100 times? specific ambition gives direction. general ambition gives anxiety. modern schooling is the low agency industrial complex everyone too busy worried what u think of them to notice u ²

~ updated at: 2025-01-30T13:19:35.632Z

“open source everything” ~ Jack, via X

~ updated at: 2025-01-28T15:00:03.002Z

Genuinely think the race to A.G.I. needs the rivalry of this ilk and yes it has begun.

https://x.com/LiangWenfeng_/status/1884080875450818754

Ok this account is not the official wenfeng lmao

~ updated at: 2025-01-28T14:03:42.890Z

listening to marc andreessen on lex fridman…

https://x.com/TnvMadhav/status/1862128639531499725

~ updated at: 2025-01-28T13:30:02.882Z

“…and oh yes almost forgot that deepseek was a side project”

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1872362712958906460

~ updated at: 2025-01-27T14:00:24.691Z

me waiting for filmbuff to upload that one much awaited review and analysis episode.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-26T04:01:46.221Z

Cal Newport on TikTok¹

When I sign in for the first time, TikTok asks me to choose my interests from a long list illustrated by cheerful emojis. I select “Life Hacks,” “Science and Education,” and “Sports.” Then I’m off. The first video shows the Clemson University baseball team playing an exhibition game against the Savannah Bananas, a professional touring squad. The Clemson infield, for some inscrutable reason, starts dancing. I swipe up. A new video begins, showing someone selecting shoes at a store. The video is only ten seconds long; by the time I’ve finished jotting down some notes, it has already started replaying. I hastily swipe again. The next video plays tranquil music while a car slowly drives toward Yosemite National Park. The algorithm must have noticed that I lingered on the wintry scene: the next video shows someone sweeping snow off a porch with some kind of rotating broom contraption. Then the feed takes a darker turn, which makes me want to scroll even faster. I see a news story about a person being pushed onto subway tracks in Manhattan—swipe—a Trump video set to ominous music—swipe—“Top 15 Most Ghetto High Schools in New Jersey”—swipe—and someone making fun of a server’s accent in a restaurant. I shut down the app.

But if he were to again, I really hope he doesn’t come across “brain rot” ever but a part of me wants him to go down that rabbit hole (and write about how he felt).

~ updated at: 2025-01-25T05:09:48.650Z

majority of dopamine rush in software engineering comes from being able to reproduce bugs that couldn’t be easily before.

~ updated at: 2025-01-24T11:43:23.105Z

“LLMs are awesome and limited”

LLMs are great at things that require relatively lesser effort than generating the input itself¹.

~ updated at: 2025-01-22T11:16:57.395Z

I found this super interesting HN thread¹ of instances/spaces where people are using small language models to solve specific problems

~ updated at: 2025-01-22T02:43:50.560Z

Here’s a curated list of software stories about crazy bugs.

Source: Software Folklore

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-17T04:01:06.208Z

So much to do so little time and energy.

~ updated at: 2025-01-15T13:58:42.539Z

The ‘Grok please explain this tweet’ button is such as good feature.

nice work @X

~ updated at: 2025-01-11T04:27:07.315Z

A nice post¹ on dealing with large codebases in general:

Summary

• Large codebases are worth working in because they usually pay your salary
• By far the most important thing is consistency
• Never start a feature without first researching prior art in the codebase
• If you don’t follow existing patterns, you better have a very good reason for it
• Understand the production footprint of the codebase
• Don’t expect to be able to test every case - instead, rely on monitoring
• Remove code any chance you get, but be very careful about it
• Make it as easy as possible for domain experts to catch your mistakes

~ updated at: 2025-01-08T12:30:03.744Z

The state of AI assisted programming by Gergely Orosz and Addy Osmani

https://open.substack.com/pub/pragmaticengineer/p/how-ai-will-change-software-engineering

~ updated at: 2025-01-08T07:22:39.151Z

Excerpts from Reflections (2025), a post by Sam Altman

“We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.”

" Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity."

Two years after incredible growth, OpenAI is moving the goalpost to A.S.I. beyond the relatively myopic A.G.I. goalpost[^1].

What sort of scaling laws apply here?

If A.S.I. is the goal, then is it okay for a “product” company to be the one to lead it’s efforts? No clear answers but the mind is curious.

[^1] I’m curious to see what sort of approach one(by that I mean an entire organization of industry-leading teams of researchers) would take to move to A.S.I.

~ updated at: 2025-01-06T01:54:06.149Z

Pacific Rim (2013) is such a good movie.

~ updated at: 2025-01-05T13:25:28.373Z

An A.I. agent that is trained on your taste. You tell it what you want (regularly or just ad-hoc), and give it constraints if you’re in a hurry. It scours the web, finds links, measures as per your taste, and gives you a compilation. You should be able to let it know what taste you’d like to develop. Inherit this agent and deploy it to learning, shopping, exploring, etc.

In short, it is all aspects of life that you want to grow in.

~ updated at: 2025-01-05T04:04:00.072Z

I really don’t know why but this snippet reminds me of the phrase

“[…]an unstoppable force meets an immovable object”

Not because I think there is a 1:1 mapping to this phrase but reminiscence.

Source

more for context

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-05T03:03:36.929Z

If you plan on levelling up your technical writing / blog post (meant for education), you’d like to visit this guide once in a while.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-04T06:30:18.727Z

Yet again reminded of this.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-04T06:30:07.062Z

every time I see Adam interacting with a nakamoto post, I’m reminded that he could most definitely be nakamoto 😆

~ updated at: 2025-01-04T04:28:16.127Z

Yet again reminded of this.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-03T15:58:07.497Z

How to learn marketing and sales as a solo entrepreneur?

BitBasher

“I built and run a saas product solo (> $500k/year). Honestly, I have never found any advice useful[…]

[…]My business is b2b and it’s a platform for certain kinds of professionals as well as an API that powers many well known businesses.

1. Networking
2. Long Game w/ SEO, Word of Mouth

“I’d say focus on the long game from day one (blog posts, good marketing pages, etc).”

“If no one wants to talk to you about it, no one is going to want to pay for it.”

More… A bunch of resources linked in replies

~ updated at: 2025-01-03T15:55:05.498Z

If you plan on levelling up your technical writing / blog post (meant for education), you’d like to visit this guide once in a while.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-03T12:34:54.244Z

I found myself reading the (well-written) Rules of Software Tutorials ¹.

I’d started publishing guides for beginners² and I found some value in the aforementioned post, that I will be inculcating in my future guides.

I’d highly recommend a read if you’re a developer planning to write guides or technical documentation.

~ updated at: 2025-01-03T12:20:17.146Z

I think it’s about time where we need be able to build stuff incredibly quickly like physically build infrastructure, incredibly quickly with technology.

~ updated at: 2025-01-03T07:00:03.320Z

it’s funny that it has to be said this way, but programming today is being mainly used to apply solved problems and build stuff on top of that but believe programming was introduced for different reason, to find solutions to problems that a human brain cannot explore, naturally with ease.

~ updated at: 2025-01-03T06:46:27.806Z

“One of my papers got declined today by the journal[…]This paper was also submitted elsewhere, and accepted” – Terence Tao, via Mastodon

[…]Because of this, a perception can be created that all of one’s peers are achieving either success or controversy, with one’s own personal career ending up becoming the only known source of examples of “mundane” failure. I speculate that this may be a contributor to the “impostor syndrome” that is prevalent in this field (though, again, not widely disseminated, due to the aforementioned reporting bias, and perhaps also due to some stigma regarding the topic).

Rejection is actually a relatively common occurrence for me, happening once or twice a year on average.

I find it best not to take these sorts of rejections personally, and move on to other journals, of course after revising the paper to address any issues brought up by the rejection.

You only fail if you give up.

~ updated at: 2025-01-02T06:30:05.896Z

John Carmack on LLMs and Interfaces:

LLM assistants are going to be a good forcing function to make sure all app features are accessible from a textual interface as well as a gui. Yes, a strong enough AI can drive a gui, but it makes so much more sense to just make the gui a wrapper around a command line interface that an LLM can talk to directly. ~ John Carmack

“The question is will top AIs get better at gui faster than all apps add text. I think I have a guess” - Andrej Karpathy

“There will probably be more conventional software written in the coming decade than ever before; the architecture of that software still matters! Better and worse affordances for AI should make a difference.” - John Carmack

When developing software, we tend to generally first try to build a Linux program that works on the terminal via CLI command, etc, with the intention of running unit tests like preliminary runs to satisfy the human mind.

Then, we integrate the said feature into whatever the product is.

This thread reminds me of Stripe’s DEV console CLI experience where every action that is possible via GUI can also be done via the Stripe CLI tool.

So building tools and apps must be looked at as layers/ levels where level 1 is a functional CLI app and level 2 is a GUI that is catered to a human being and their ease of use.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2025-01-01T16:44:42.771Z

Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel published a DOOM game-based captcha.

Kill 3 enemies to pass the captcha.

Surprisingly difficult if you move away from the spawn point.

doom-captcha.vercel.app

There’s a “How it works” section but there doesn’t seem to be a hard link to this section because it’s all controlled by Javascript (spectacular RauchG fashion :wink: :wink:) but here’s the source code

Here’s an X post by RauchG https://x.com/rauchg/status/1874130110120706556

~ updated at: 2025-01-01T16:15:32.679Z

I just stumbled upon a short and sweet post via Hacker News

It’s essentially a note about getting started with something and a mindset to keep going forward.

This post served as a good reminder to envision growth in the next quarter of the 21st century.

A few points inspired from the post:

1. Start small because expecting a big change will be overwhelming to the pondering mind

2. It’s okay even if you try to copy others because unconsciously and fortunately, you’ll eventually add your spin onto it, and with the aid of time, whatever you’re nurturing will turn out into something unique

3. What looks like overnight success for others, is just an insane amount of work and discipline put behind the scene

4. The effort someone who is at a stage you’re striving towards has put will be more or less in the same ballpark as how much you will have to put so no point in comparing yourself to others

Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

~ updated at: 2025-01-01T15:59:38.001Z

I just realized that the century is 25% done and a lot has happened.

Here’s to the next and stronger 25%!

~ updated at: 2025-01-01T13:54:07.343Z

“there’s an ancient class war at play. the culture of the euro/anglo aristocracy is of elegant leisure, art patronage, athletics. the culture of the capitalist bourgeoisie is of constant striving, sheer Faustian drive, efficiency”

“the former is much more tasteful but the latter pays the civilizational dues”

— Roon

There are times when every other role comes into play with increased ROI (civilization scale)

~ updated at: 2024-12-27T05:04:37.136Z

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

– Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek believes these are the times (of acc) where humans need to go harder to push humanity towards Kardeshev Type I and beyond.

~ updated at: 2024-12-27T05:01:21.953Z

I generated this activity aggregate report using https://git-wrapped.com

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-27T04:15:03.120Z

I was able to build this feature in my content publisher application quickly (thanks to LLMs)

I can now post to X and Bsky from this app.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-25T12:25:51.557Z

I was able to build this feature in my content publisher application quickly (thanks to LLMs)

I can now post to X and Bsky from this app.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-25T11:34:45.303Z

The urge to rewatch The Big Short for like the gazillionth time.

~ updated at: 2024-12-25T07:44:25.624Z

I found this great explainer by Welch Labs on Mechanistic Interpretability:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGO_Ehywuxc

I cannot believe I didn’t come across this channel before.

~ updated at: 2024-12-25T07:11:57.775Z

I found this great explainer by Welch Labs on Mechanistic Interpretability:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGO_Ehywuxc

I cannot believe I didn’t come across this channel before.

~ updated at: 2024-12-24T17:01:19.645Z

Wow! I just came across news that Christopher Nolan’s next movie (2026) is based on Homer’s The Odyssey

Source: https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1871320030773727587/

~ updated at: 2024-12-24T02:43:17.934Z

This doesn’t need to be said but There is so much compressed into this single sentence. Hopes of mankind.

If 2020s had a lesson, I must say this is a good reminder that one can try and learn a lot with A.I. assistants patiently helping you out.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1870527558783218106/

~ updated at: 2024-12-22T09:52:44.404Z

Eustress is all you need

~ updated at: 2024-12-22T06:03:16.268Z

Learning in long, uninterrupted flow states.

Executing in short, fast time boxes.

~ updated at: 2024-12-21T13:37:31.068Z

agi has been achieved externally

~ updated at: 2024-12-21T04:20:16.860Z

I’ve always wanted idea threads that easy to use. I try to use Excalidraw to create chain of ideas rendered as bubbles / nodes in a network.

I can’t help but think about the new Pocket hardware that launched this week.

One catch phrase caught my attention. “Conversation threads” if I remember it correctly.

This could help me out but I can’t say for sure.

Sometimes I wanna build it from scratch 🥹 because i genuinely believe being able to navigate idea chains without losing context is crucial in my professional life as of yet.

~ updated at: 2024-12-20T08:16:42.469Z

The cycle of centuries

https://x.com/pertorstensson/status/1869879675507347755

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-20T08:05:35.424Z

I use A.I. to warm up the execution process on task chains planned beforehand.

Still majority of time is still spent problem solving (using brain 🧠 ) that finally involving the aforementioned task chains https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1869737000213061648/

~ updated at: 2024-12-20T07:53:48.432Z

My brain still hasn’t fully accepted Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor.

Might not be the best casting decision but I hope he proves this wrong.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-20T02:29:53.889Z

I stumbled upon a succinct piece from Paul Irish, about ‘how to enhance website visitor experience on a website using considerable tools at disposal’, while continuing my dive into vercel.

The below points to keep the ‘why’s pickled:

1. Slow TCP ramp up
2. The first 14kb is crucial (because of point 1)
3. Critical CSS for above the fold renders

This talk was referenced in the “7 Principles of Rich Web Applications”.

🔗 I’m attaching the said “Delivering the goods” talk/keynote in this post for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8W_6xWphtw

~ updated at: 2024-12-14T18:00:05.954Z

I found myself revisiting rauchg’s 7 principles of rich web applications:

1. Pre-rendering isn’t optional
2. React immediately to user input
3. React to data changes (server side included)
4. Control data exchange between client and server
5. Don’t break history, enhance it
6. Push code updates (yes client code updates)
7. Predict Behaviour (I honestly think this is overkill — but brilliant if pulled off)

This (re-)read was part of my dive into “how vercel ships good quality software so quickly” assumption.

And oh, here’s the link to the article from 2014, — the examples are really helpful to wrap your mind around the concepts that are seemingly complex (at first).

🔗 https://rauchg.com/2014/7-principles-of-rich-web-applications

~ updated at: 2024-12-14T16:07:15.740Z

Interesting observation:

X has started crawling the “link” in my bio every time i post (or even repost).

~ updated at: 2024-12-14T08:26:46.050Z

Lowkey asking for Tex support on Netnewswire RSS client.

I’ve attached a screenshot of the @NetNewsWire macOS client.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-13T06:30:13.350Z

We can certainly say A.G.I. is on the horizon when Rick and Morty’s Inter-dimensional cable is recreated with A.I. slop.

(It’s almost on the horizon)

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-13T05:21:50.452Z

Interesting! but we need to pump up those academic research numbers.

https://x.com/simonw/status/1867362623098171499

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-12-13T03:28:23.713Z

Andrej Karpathy’s book recommends

Science Fiction: All short stories by Ted Chiang Especially: Exhalation, Division By Zero, Understand, The Story of Your Life, Liking What You See, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, What’s Expected of Us The Martian by Andy Weir A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (Chapter one for its portrayal of superintelligence) Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Nonfiction: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins The Vital Question by Nick Lane How To Live by Derek Sivers 1984 by George Orwell In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond An Immense World by Ed Yong The Master Switch by Tim Wu

Fantasy: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Summarized and Compiled by Grok

Karpathy’s Post on X

~ updated at: 2024-12-09T02:36:09.898Z

Stripe Press is a really well designed & implemented website 👏 https://press.stripe.com/

~ updated at: 2024-12-08T10:47:26.468Z

Someone tried to inject a crypto miner into the ultralytics PyPi package (v8.3.41 & v8.3.42)

While these versions no longer are downloadable, if it already is (cached or otherwise) because you’re using it, Please delete those versions / update immediately.

The GitHub issue is still ongoing with what could’ve been done to avoid this. https://github.com/ultralytics/ultralytics/issues/18027

Here’s a comprehensive writeup by the yossarian (@8x5clPW2) on what happened. https://blog.yossarian.net/2024/12/06/zizmor-ultralytics-injection

~ updated at: 2024-12-08T03:06:10.259Z

Sony has expressed interest in purchasing Kadokawa.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24300583/sony-kadokawa-acquisition-from-software-anime-manga

~ updated at: 2024-11-24T11:19:19.011Z

Kendrick Lamar’s Link in Bio Page my-gnx.com is hosted on Vercel.

I was wondering if it’s because he was using a link in the bio service. If you inspect the dev console, it appears that there is some relation to Linkfire , but loosely so.

Guillermo Rauch jokes about Vercel’s default favicon still being used

~ updated at: 2024-11-24T02:40:02.070Z

I’ve finally added my 🦋 bluesky profile to my ’link in bio’ page (bagel.ink/@tnvmadhav)

I took this beautiful iPhone Mockup of my link in the bio page using the WebShotPro iPhone application.

Get it here -> bagel.ink/c/DhLwv0

WebShotPro also generates an editable open graph image of the website based on the HTML metatags

🏞️ Context #1 , 🏞️ Context #2 , 🏞️ Context #3

~ updated at: 2024-11-23T12:54:48.910Z

Unread @verge posts are piling up in my RSS client.

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-23T04:24:56.840Z

mkbhd is (not lowkey) getting cooked in the comments 🥶🌶️

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-22T13:31:46.998Z

Today I learned about the term “Hyrum’s Law” in software engineering.

It refers that even though implementation specifics are hidden, breadcrumbs of implementation will be expected to be consistent when there’s no apparent change the interface signature.

And any implementation change can and will break a small subset of users’ workflow.

And yes there’s an XKCD for it.

Quoting one of Go’s package author:

“I wrote the crypto/rsa comments. We take Hyrum’s Law (and backwards compatibility [1]) extremely seriously in Go. Here are a couple more examples” - via HN

Rabbit Hole [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42201892 [2] https://abenezer.org/blog/hyrum-law-in-golang [3] https://www.hyrumslaw.com [4] https://xkcd.com/1172/

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-22T06:30:11.909Z

I like the HTTP 418 Teapot joke but I had to do this

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-21T12:30:33.678Z

if I already didn’t think that dude was built different, I would’ve been mind-blown 🤯 https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1859378984577876097/

~ updated at: 2024-11-21T09:07:09.668Z

“Mistakes are a portal to creativity” – Cillian Murphy on working with Christopher Nolan and experiences in his film set. He implies that most of brilliant moments on the cinema screen are a result of capturing those lightning in the bottle moments.

• via X

I was fortunate to come across a documentation of one such example in a tweet from a Nolan specific Fan account.

A must follow account for film enthusiasts 👉🏻 https://x.com/NolanAnalyst

~ updated at: 2024-11-18T01:58:58.306Z

John Carmack writes about his (visibly) weird a game engine debugging dream and he suspects that the game engine must’ve been written in C++ and the bug could’ve been a uninitialised variable without doing an RCA.

A level domain knowledge in anything that leaves you guessing causes of uncommon scenarios in most cases is desirable.

• via X

~ updated at: 2024-11-17T06:30:03.034Z

It’s not everyday something like this happens.

Google comeback a certainty?

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-15T06:30:09.130Z

Opportunities come and go. You have to catch and squeeze it dry. It’s like catching lightning in a bottle. This happens rarely but you know it when it’s happening. You get into the zone.

Sometimes you feel something strong is approaching but you know you’re not skilled enough to properly make use of the opportunity.

The only solution is to keep improving such that the chances of missing out on sure-shot opportunities due to mere “skill issue” are drastically curtailed.

The next big thing is either approaching quickly or is already here.

my answer to the usual question of “what’s next?”: I don’t know! Because if I did, I’d already be half-way done doing it. And then it wouldn’t really be next, it’d be now.

Finding the next now is the art of wandering, and wandering well takes practice and patience. Don’t rush it.

• via https://world.hey.com/dhh

~ updated at: 2024-11-15T06:30:03.077Z

Opportunities come and go. You have to catch and squeeze it dry. It’s like catching lightning in a bottle. This happens rarely but you know it when it’s happening. You get into the zone.

Sometimes you feel something strong is approaching but you know you’re not skilled enough to properly make use of the opportunity.

The only solution is to keep improving such that the chances of missing out on sure-shot opportunities due to mere “skill issue” are drastically curtailed.

The next big thing is either approaching quickly or is already here.

my answer to the usual question of “what’s next?”: I don’t know! Because if I did, I’d already be half-way done doing it. And then it wouldn’t really be next, it’d be now.

Finding the next now is the art of wandering, and wandering well takes practice and patience. Don’t rush it.

• via https://world.hey.com/dhh

~ updated at: 2024-11-14T18:04:53.148Z

Two huge podcast episodes dropped this week:

— Interview with Dario Amodei by Lex Fridman

It’s about time Anthropic’s C.E.O. got into the limelight to fan the flame that is the narrative of journey to A.G.I. I had recently read his essay and hopefully he talks more about it on lex fridman.

— Interview with Gwern Branwen by Dwarkesh Patel

This one caught me by surprise, I thought he finally did a face reveal when I first saw it in my feed only to know both voice and avatar were modulated.

I’ve been a long time fan of his famous essays at gwern.net and this one is gonna be an all timer.

~ updated at: 2024-11-14T17:07:54.193Z

TIL about a YAML file validation using yq command line tool.

If you have a .{YAML/YML} file, you can run yq eval -v {path/to/file} to do a quick verification on the file format.

https://github.com/mikefarah/yq

~ updated at: 2024-11-13T12:30:03.143Z

I really missed gdb’s coding tweets. I’m glad to know he is back at @openai shipping software.

-X

~ updated at: 2024-11-13T06:23:11.120Z

Damn the latest mkbhd video getting a lot of comments like this but speeding in school zone isn’t just a misdemeanour.

The section of the video was cut out and people are getting angrier because of this.

Ok, he apologised

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-13T06:03:28.503Z

“Struggling to document your TILs not because you’re learning so many new things but you’re balancing a backlog load of them and churning mental load in retrospect” isn’t something one should be comfortable with.

~ updated at: 2024-11-06T11:00:02.988Z

notes & excepts from What you know that just ain’t so

We don’t need to know everything for sure before taking action.

[…]Convinced that half the opportunities in the world just don’t apply to your situation and the other half is a slam dunk. Nonsense.

Unlike school and university, where there is reward to those who focus on rigid inputs and outputs, the real world is absurd. The real world doesn’t reward all (apparently equal) attempts equally. There is luck / timing aspect. But the main point remains same, there is trade-off. You MAY become more successful from half knowledge about something than doing it absolutely right.

Don’t take anything as gospel. Learn that every bit of success / failure was influenced by the (seeming) absurdity of the world.

It’s not a bad day (in business or otherwise) if you’re reminded of this.

~ updated at: 2024-11-06T06:30:03.156Z

POV you’re a basic crud app facing a man and his $20/mo cursor subscription.

(he could’ve used a google sheet template but no).

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-06T01:50:00.913Z

One can confidently say that they’ve “learned to learn” by breathing the fact that real learning happens through living the reality rather than surfing a commentary on said reality.

~ updated at: 2024-11-05T06:30:03.143Z

I’m experimenting with chatgpt’s ability to count calories of the food and suggest wait time before having the next meal.

1. Click picture of food
2. Send to chatGPT
3. Receive rough time gap in hours
4. Set a timer to wait before having next meal

I’ve initially thought of using it in my local machine but I immediately realized this is useful to me on the go via my mobile browser.

Since I’d already had a web tools application provisioned up and running. I’d used chatGPT to convert the flask app to a @golang HTTP handler.

I’ve now exposed it via the web .

Bring your own chatGPT API Key!

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-05T02:48:45.828Z

One can confidently say that they’ve “learned to learn” by breathing the fact that real learning happens through living the reality rather than surfing a commentary on said reality.

~ updated at: 2024-11-04T14:49:50.662Z

If this doesn’t make you go “hell yeah” or “hell no”, you’re not on the spectrum because there is no spectrum here.

via X

🏞️ Context #1

~ updated at: 2024-11-04T14:30:17.297Z

The funny thing about the human perception of hard work is that the apparent hurdle to subsequent attempts to utter failures is not a psychological one.

~ updated at: 2024-11-04T13:00:02.953Z

Can you solve your way through a problem through sheer spaced repetition?

~ updated at: 2024-11-04T06:30:03.510Z

A developer knows how straining and difficult it is to document a debugging session especially in hindsight where a certain optimum spurs out of the void that all suboptimal attempts look pale in comparison so much so that sometimes you start feeling a little embarrassed (I do).

I enjoyed reading and appreciate this post on improving memory usage performance by @b0rk. Also learned about many packages along the way.

I’d like to practice doing this more often.

~ updated at: 2024-11-04T06:11:31.292Z

The funny thing about the human perception of hard work is that the apparent hurdle to subsequent attempts to utter failures is not a psychological one.

~ updated at: 2024-11-03T13:05:54.130Z

Can you solve your way through a problem through sheer spaced repetition?

~ updated at: 2024-11-03T12:43:53.373Z

Clarity breeding action doesn’t take into consideration the baseline habitual tendencies.

~ updated at: 2024-11-03T12:30:05.713Z

Fleeting thoughts influenced by the spark of moments in the universe instead of steady build up of logical implications is the flywheel that trades your time for life experiences.

~ updated at: 2024-11-03T12:30:02.989Z

A chunk of my public content feed via my content publisher system goes along with media (mostly images). Sometimes the media attachments contain a significant amount of context that may be lost with text only compilation.

So I decided to send static media links of images/assets hosted on my content publisher application to my public feed .

This feed is used by several feed renders that are live on my blog site [1] , my GitHub profile [2] and my post archiver cronjob.

🏞️ Context #1 , 🏞️ Context #2

~ updated at: 2024-11-03T03:30:23.369Z

A small % of iPhone 14 plus phones have a camera hardware issue.

Apple says it or an Authorized Service Provider could service your phone for free.

Some conditions apply but you can check with your iPhone’s serial number on Apple’s support page

via The Verge

I’ve had a similar issue but with the iPhone 13 series where the display hardware was faulty and Apple Authorized Service Provider verified and fixed it for free.

I’d written and shared a post about it and you can read about my experience on my blog .

~ updated at: 2024-11-02T08:30:05.489Z

A successful founder gets things done.

A person who has an intense want will find ways to get things done.

This intensity comes from life experiences.

Bad childhood can build character and lead to strong wants.

See where the road converges? https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1852017824971264177/

~ updated at: 2024-11-02T01:39:09.985Z

I spent some time to make some significant performance improvements (low hanging) to my blog.

The lighthouse score on the mobile looks pretty good now.

I’d also run a scan on @cloudflare’s radar tool and found that total bytes score was less than 512kB.

This means that my little site has (unofficially) entered the 512kb.club 🥳

I opened a pull request to make it official. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻

~ updated at: 2024-11-01T15:46:09.891Z

I’m experimenting with chatgpt’s ability to count calories of the food and suggest wait time before having the next meal.

1. Click picture of food
2. Send to chatGPT
3. Receive rough time gap in hours
4. Set a timer to wait before having next meal

~ updated at: 2024-11-01T12:29:27.349Z

what? nothing. just me thinking about “the boy and the heron” / “how to live” an entire week after watching it. i thought i knew hayao miyazaki but he surprised me with this incredible feat. again.

~ updated at: 2024-11-01T04:41:08.425Z

TIL we can prevent bash script from prematurely exiting using set +e.

set +e
<some command>
set -e

This knowledge is useful if you want to run certain scripts and perform custom actions on the resultant exit code without losing information due to premature exits.

From bash reference manual

~ updated at: 2024-10-30T12:43:30.749Z

[1] Open Source AI Definition as per Open Source Initiative

The OSAID offers a standard by which community-led, open and public evaluations will be conducted to validate whether or not an AI system can be deemed Open Source AI.

“The new definition requires Open Source models to provide enough information about their training data so that a ‘skilled person can recreate a substantially equivalent system using the same or similar data,’ which goes further than what many proprietary or ostensibly Open Source models do today,” said Ayah Bdeir, who leads AI strategy at Mozilla”

[2] Open Source AI Definition 1.0

1. Free to use without permission
2. Study the components to learn how it works
3. Modify for use to change the output
4. Share with other with or without modification

These freedoms apply both to a fully functional system and to discrete elements of a system. A precondition to exercising these freedoms is to have access to the preferred form to make modifications to the system.

This involves data, code and weights.

~ updated at: 2024-10-29T06:30:05.879Z

This is a dumbed down (simple) take.

A.I. is to “building” as what client side javascript is to HTML.

Elimination of extra time and effort to gain a certain outcome. https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1850940029155373382/

~ updated at: 2024-10-29T06:30:03.058Z

I was able to convert, and load some of my computer science related notes in .txt files like HTTP and Redis onto Anki in seconds.

I was able to revise in matter of minutes!

Thank you @openai :)

One can find this script useful if you wanna automate Anki flashcard generation with Python and ChatGPT. https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1850163990296433051/

~ updated at: 2024-10-27T06:30:17.002Z

TIL about the cookiecutter PyPi package

It’s a quick way to scaffold new python packages, plugins, django projects and many more from pre-built templates.

Using jinja2 template syntax, one can create an entire cookiecutter project template for use and reuse.

A comprehensive documentation can be found on the internet .

~ updated at: 2024-10-26T13:30:03.046Z

AI is (unsurprisingly) good at converting technical notes into Anki Flashcards.

For the uninitiated, it would’ve taken several minutes to construct questions and answers after taking hours worth of notes but with a relatively small LLM like GPT-4o-mini, one could churn out Q&A list in seconds.

I believe certain unnecessary hurdles of the theoretical learning process is eliminated.

And yes, all one needs now is to be able to actually import said compilation onto Anki in bulk. And most importantly, eat the damn frog!

It seems like AnkiWeb doesn’t support export or imports.

I’ve installed Anki Desktop app so I could bulk import new flashcards.

I’ve generated a simple python script to process a text file using GPT-4 (customize prompts) and output a anki importable .txt file.

The process of taking a note file and generating flashcards is now streamlined.

I could setup a local cron job to run everyday, that processes the notes from my local notes directory for the day and generate anki flashcards with the learnings.

I could configure a LaunchAgent or Daemon perhaps using .plist configuration.

~ updated at: 2024-10-26T13:14:16.350Z

If you don’t know how something impacts the world around you, you don’t fully understand. https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1849773180136599989/

~ updated at: 2024-10-26T06:30:03.189Z

TIL that ICE TSUNAMIS are a thing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_shove https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1849163888895599031/

~ updated at: 2024-10-24T12:07:14.479Z

To the builders of the future, you need to relive the pain that the thing has genuinely relieved.

~ updated at: 2024-10-24T06:30:02.956Z

Excerpts from “Desperation Induced Focus”

“Most big companies aren’t focused on creating things out of nothing. Someone else made the magic money-making machine, and they assume that it will just keep working.”

“This lack of focus is a luxury and a disease.”

This is called peace time thinking. Thoughts generated out of seemingly derived notions or non-axioms. Sometimes too much trust in the system.

My advice to people when they are thinking about instituting a new process is to go to a whiteboard and write down the answer to this question: “If you could only get one thing done this year, what would it be?”.

Desperation inspires creativity and intense focus. It is an essential ingredient to building great products and services.

So, the next time you feel desperate, lean in. Embrace it. Use it as the fuel to create the next founding moment4 for your company.

And the next time someone tries to tell you to do something because a big company does it, be suspicious.

One must arrive at something from first principles and not because someone told them (a.k.a. by proxy). Keep the advice in mind and use it as a reminder but never an axiom.

To the builders of the future, you need to relive the pain that it has genuinely relieved.

~ updated at: 2024-10-23T17:30:03.050Z

I’d stumbled upon a rather brilliant @leetcode editorial piece and a useful mind map on solving problems.

This something that a younger version of me would’ve appreciated especially when starting out.

I’ve shared some notes and excerpts on my blog

~ updated at: 2024-10-22T03:37:31.352Z

Ownership is important. Start your own blog! https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1848261668024807887/

~ updated at: 2024-10-21T12:30:03.083Z

Notes from leetcode’s editorial section on solving data structures and algorithm problems in general.

After solving a leetcode problem, found myself checking out an editorial section to see what other approaches I could’ve missed. What I found was unexpected.

A guide to identifying patterns and choosing approaches. This is something I could’ve used when I was a couple of years younger just starting out.

So this time before diving into the answer, let’s understand a few general patterns that you can use in your future journey:

Sorted Input:

Apply binary search for efficient element lookup. Use the two-pointer technique for problems involving pairs or segments. Unsorted Input:

Apply dynamic programming for questions related to counting ways or optimizing values. Use backtracking for problems that ask for all possibilities or combinations (this is also a suitable fallback if dynamic programming isn’t going to work). Use a Trie for prefix matching and string-building scenarios. Use a hash map or set to find specific elements quickly. Implement a monotonic stack or sliding window technique for managing elements while continuously finding maximum or minimum values. Input is a Graph or Tree:

Use DFS to explore all paths or when the question does not require finding the shortest path. Use BFS when the question asks for the shortest path or fewest steps. For binary trees, use DFS if the problem involves exploring specific depths or levels. Linked List Input:

Use techniques involving slow and fast pointers or “prev” and “dummy” pointers to facilitate certain operations if you are unsure how to achieve a specific outcome.

Note: There’s so much more to this pattern! We just wanted to give you a glimpse of what pattern recognition boils down to in its simplest form. Feel free to add your own flair and create a detailed chart!

Here’s a useful mindmap of techniques to use per problem type

~ updated at: 2024-10-21T03:50:20.239Z

This takes the general concept of “put your money where your mouth is” and zooms out a bit IMO.

Reframe as “if your mouth isn’t where your money is, where is it?” https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1848025357061926957/

~ updated at: 2024-10-20T22:00:02.964Z

Perhaps goals are just misaligned.

It’s not about the immediate output but how it interacts with the world.

Zooming out every now and then, helps in keeping tunnel vision at bay.

~ updated at: 2024-10-20T18:30:03.007Z

Moving slowly is much better than giving up.

~ updated at: 2024-10-20T15:44:28.929Z

Notes from Local First Software :

With the introduction and proliferation of “cloud-hosted” Software as a Service (SaaS), especially for consumer software, it becomes unclear who owns the data that flows through them.

Many times, the users who upload/generate data don’t have complete control over what happens to them.

Moreover, the experience of using application software has become unnecessarily complex and painful.

If you’re a software engineer, designer, product manager, or independent app developer working on production-ready software today, how can you help?

The paper proposes an alternative concept called “Local First”, a guide for software developers to support experiences w.r.t. speed, ownership of data, and quality of use.

Seven points to use as guideways for the uninitiated:

1. Make it Fast

Feedback has to be instant and non-blocking. Network calls (to servers or stores for example) affect this the most.

2. Multi-Device

As the name suggests, “local first” doesn’t mean data and software should always be offline; rather, the “sync” if necessary, needs to be quiet, in the background, and non-blocking.

3. Offline Support

Not all software / client-side applications, need to interact with remote servers for all tasks.

Offline support means having a copy of all relevant resources available to work on without internet access.

4. Collaborative

When a large enough ecosystem supports local first development, there needs to be a system to support collision detection and resolution systems.

This is highly relevant for Google, GitHub, etc.

5. Longevity

This is purely data-centric. Data needs to persist independently of the software that creates/processes it.

This means data should be importable/exportable into standard formats.

6. Privacy

Data that is private must be able to remain private. Local First Development supports this philosophy.

7. User Control

The user must be able to choose where the data is stored. The user should be able to have 100% ownership of the data. The user can choose to do whatever they want with it.

~ updated at: 2024-10-19T08:34:42.678Z

Great timing.

I looked forward to the customizability of NotebookLM’s, audio podcast generation (Solid Product!).

I can now customize and provide instructions on what to focus on when given a particularly technical document.

Thank you @Google and team! https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1846946225251406039/

I can’t wait to start implementing this today!

~ updated at: 2024-10-18T03:38:04.022Z

TIL you can inspect a CLI command using the type <cmd> CLI command.

I usually use which <cmd> to verify this but type provides a human-readable description/comment of the command.

Here’s an example from my terminal:

$ type openai-env
openai-env is a shell function from /Users/<user>/.zshrc

$ which openai-env
openai-env () {
	export $(cat $PYTHON_PROJECT_PATH/.env)
}

I learned this from Julia Evans’ recent comic strip on PATH

~ updated at: 2024-10-16T03:28:30.965Z

Excerpts from Machines of Loving Grace by the CEO of Anthropic

…“I think their rate of discovery could be increased by 10x or more if there were a lot more talented, creative researchers. Or, put another way, I think the returns to intelligence are high for these discoveries, and that everything else in biology and medicine mostly follows from them.”

Yes, it’s mostly not (just) about doing what we already do… just faster. But, having enough brain juice (left) to be open to doing other things.

“While that might sound crazy, the fact is that civilization has successfully navigated major economic shifts in the past: from hunter-gathering to farming, farming to feudalism, and feudalism to industrialism. I suspect that some new and stranger thing will be needed, and that it’s something no one today has done a good job of envisioning.”

I try to believe that cost of executing and applying “solved problems” will go down eventually with machines taking over the replication part.

It’s then up to humans to pick up new challenges. This could be improving lifespan, brain capacity, low latency and efficient modes of communication, transport, energy efficiency, climate control/repair, food and water scarcity, etc.

To know about what lies beyond the horizon (which appears to be approaching quite rapidly), we must practice research ourselves, observe the work of researchers right now. What they think / dream about.

Human creativity will have to be put to the test to find meaning on this pale blue dot .

~ updated at: 2024-10-13T12:30:03.176Z

I’m (obviously) not there yet but doing stuff like this makes you competent.

You’re either doing it for fun/satisfaction/requirement (or) you’re doing it to learn.

Either way you’ll gain enough skills to pick more ambitious projects.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1845186558414159875/

~ updated at: 2024-10-13T09:13:33.290Z

I’m reminded of Kernighan’s Law .

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. ~ Brian Kernighan

But here’s the thing, if you stick to simple solutions, you’ll not be prepared for inevitable scenarios where your debugging skills aren’t up to the mark.

There is great risk in coming up with clever solutions but this actually pays off when you constantly push this boundary by debugging and finding faults in said clever solutions. https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1845062132326449455/

~ updated at: 2024-10-12T12:30:03.243Z

Linus Torvalds on working with GitHub Pull Requests

~ updated at: 2024-10-04T06:30:03.070Z

TIL that the .me is country code based TLD (ccTLD) for Montenegro.

And that it’s not some individualistic / personal branding thing that we could take as granted.

Reference: Wix Perplexity

~ updated at: 2024-10-04T04:30:09.183Z

I finally bit the bullet and learned to use SwiftData and it turned out to be simple to use (as a beginner).

I’m playing around to try and learn how the data is modeled.

I could go from ephemeral to persistent storage in a couple of hours.

~ updated at: 2024-09-29T14:59:30.158Z

Excerpts from Using Progressive Enhancement by GOV dot UK

“Progressive enhancement is a way of building websites and applications based on the idea that you should make your page work with HTML first.”

HTML and CSS layers are fault-tolerant (browsers will ignore declarations that it doesn’t understand).

Javascript must only be used to enhance user experience in necessary parts of data that are already in HTML.

“Where possible the JavaScript should enhance HTML and CSS that provide the same core functionality. For example, an autocomplete could enhance an element, or something similar. This still lets the user do what they need to do, even if the JavaScript fails.”

HTML and CSS offer the bottom layer (Layer 1) where things can happen but rather slowly. Javascript layer to exist to make a certain action faster. If the javascript layer is to be removed, the required functionality would still be possible albeit slowly as initially intended.

This way, no process is “blocked” during Javascript-based failures, etc.

“If you believe your service can only be built using JavaScript, you should think about using simpler solutions that are built using HTML and CSS and will meet user needs.” For example, if you want to use JavaScript to provide interactive graphs, other options are to:

Display the data in a table Allow the data to be exported so that it can analysed in another application Pre-render the graphs as images

If the core functionality of your service cannot be provided without JavaScript, you’ll need to consider how users can access your service through other channels. This might be telephone calls or in-person visits to offices.

Looks like the UK gov prefers in-person processes rather than injecting Javascript into government websites. This a highly opinionated decision.

If you do choose to use client-side JavaScript frameworks, be aware that although they can be helpful when building a service with a complex user interface, they can introduce problems.

Using a client-side JavaScript framework can:

Increase the overall size of your code base and push processing to the client side, causing performance issues for users with a slower network connection or lower-powered device Create a reliance on third-party code that your developers do not have control over, requiring you to make major changes to your service to stay up to date with changes in the framework make it difficult to find people with the skills required to maintain the code, if the frameworks lose popularity over time If you use a JavaScript framework you should:

Be able to justify with evidence, how using JavaScript would benefit users Be aware of any negative impacts and be able to mitigate them Consider whether the benefits of using it outweigh the potential problems Only use the framework for parts of the user interface that cannot be built using HTML and CSS alone design each part of the user interface as a separate component

Having separate components means that if the JavaScript fails to load, it will only be that single component that fails. The rest of the page will load as normal.

I can understand this approach, keeping things light and simple is a win, and keeping the user base in mind (literally everyone in the country in this example), it’s important to ensure stability and dependency-less design.

The userbase for a normal corporate may or may not be the same, so the design for the userbase is a good way to think about problem-solving.

“If you use JavaScript, it should only be used to enhance the HTML and CSS so users can still use the service if the JavaScript fails.”

“Some users may deliberately turn off features in their browsers. You should respect their decision and make sure those users can still use your service. Some users may deliberately turn off features in their browsers. You should respect their decision and make sure those users can still use your service.”

A user can turn off JavaScript in their browsers AND direly need certain services.

“Do not build your service as a single-page application (SPA). This is where the loading of pages within your service is handled by JavaScript, rather than the browser.”

A subset of users using accessibility features may get a sub-optimal or dead-end experience. The heavy use of back and forward buttons and page refresh can cause states that they don’t intend or understand.

The UK government has written another piece on why progressive enhancement is good (I agree in favor of incremental improvements as good engineering practice):

Quoting architect of gov dot uk

“Progressive enhancement is about resilience as much as it is about inclusiveness.”

~ updated at: 2024-09-29T04:39:18.497Z

TIL there is a site pyvideo.org that curates videos from community and related events.

~ updated at: 2024-09-28T16:30:03.005Z

I found a really useful refresher/guide to get back to while working with SAML

Worthy of a bookmark!

~ updated at: 2024-09-28T12:30:03.033Z

Some text snippets from the white paper on reading comprehension on plain paper vs on a screen

“If texts are longer than a page, scrolling and the lack of spatiotemporal markers of the digital texts to aid memory and reading comprehension might impede reading performance.”

“…Hence, we cannot say whether the visual ergonomics of the laptop computer screens hurt subjects’ reading. In future studies, employing online measures including eye tracking methods would appropriately address this important issue.”

“…. Scrolling is known to hamper the process of reading, by imposing a spatial instability which may negatively affect the reader’s mental representation of the text and, by implication, comprehension.”

via HN

~ updated at: 2024-09-28T09:30:03.016Z

If your AWS deployments seem unnecessarily slow, you could do something about it.

I’ve found a well-written piece that could help.

~ updated at: 2024-09-27T12:30:03.052Z

They’re perfect for airpods https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1839351084630028749/

~ updated at: 2024-09-27T06:30:03.003Z