Notes on A Personal Odyssey

The great thing about measuring developer productivity is that you can quickly identify the bad programmers. I want to tell you about the worst programmer I know, and why I fought to keep him in the team.

Software development still has a long way to go until it fully embraces the cloud

Hot takes and cold truths on software, startups, and the lies we tell ourselves.

CBS "60 Minutes" sacrifices its credibility in selling apocalyptic pseudoscience

Many people today believe that open source software is positive for our society, but fear the logical next steps: open state, open execution, and open…

Paradigm is a frontier technology investment firm that builds and invests in crypto, AI, robotics, and across new frontiers from the earliest stages.

And not enough high-status cushy jobs to go around

The coolest thing I'm currently working on at Mel is probably Earendil, a prototype decentralized, type-II censorship resistant communication and payment network, which will be a foundational building block in Mel's off-chain composable ecosystem.

The promise of Urbit lies in its reimagination of the digital world using components that are as constrained and limited as possible.

I came across a video by Simple Lucas describing a routine to improve focus and productivity. The routine was basically: Don’t use any screens/entertainment when trying to focus on work. When you start to feel mentally drained, sit and stare at a wall for x minutes to recover focus. I’ve been trying it, and it’s a very effective (but hard) routine.

Your possessions came alive. Now they won't stop talking.

“In the sensory as in the higher order, the law is the same and is old as evil: THE REMEDY FOR DISORDER WILL BE PAIN.” -the Count in The Saint Petersburg Dialogues, by Joseph de Maistre…

Games can be made in many different ways. Many games are made using big, general purpose game engines such as Unity and Godot. I enjoy using the Odin Programming Language combined with Raylib. Odin is a C-like programming language and Raylib is library for drawing graphics, checking input and playing sounds. So it’s just a program that uses a simple library, no engine! There are no objectively best ways to create games.

Your .env files are a liability. Two simple patterns for injecting secrets from 1Password or macOS Keychain so credentials never touch disk as plaintext.

The early years of marriage are a time of significant personal and relational changes as partners adjust to their new roles, but the specific ways that spouses’ personalities may change in early marriage and how these changes are associated with ...

As a data format, yaml is extremely complicated and it has many footguns. In this post I explain some of those pitfalls by means of an example, and I suggest a few simpler and safer yaml alternatives.

Each of these products solved some problem in my life and took a long time to figure out.

~ a world-help site ~

Why AI doomers are Catastrophically, Spectacularly, and Dangerously wrong

Estimates for achieving intermediate fluency in Mandarin Chinese range up to spending years and around 4000 total hours (2,200h classroom hours, 1,800 outside). I did it in 1500 hours total and less than a year.[1] 1. There is a lot of disagreement on language proficiency estimates. They are unreliable and inaccurate. My rough best estimates: Mean: 2,200h classroom + ~1800h outside - 50% pass ILR 3 - true average level is ~ILR 2+ My journey: 150h classroom + 1350h outs

In many discussions where questions of "alignment" or "AI safety" crop up, I am baffled by seriously intelligent people imbuing almost magic...

A guide in implementing continuous deployment with SSH and Tailscale

How tech companies make money and why it's important