Monday, 2025-09-08 to Sunday, 2025-09-14
On batch handling Bookmarks
One of the main teachings of gtd is that you have to capture ideas, todos, interesting things and “handle” them later as a batch. I have been trying to practice this by not getting sucked into reading all the interesting things that come my way by bookmarking them and closing the tab. I bookmark stuff in a few different places — pinboard.in, X’s bookmark feature, private message to myself on Whatsapp, emails to myself, links shared on WhatsApp, playlists on Youtube, bookmarks on LinkedIn, purchased books on Manning, yakread and newsletter subscriptions.
Whie processing this, it helps to have different buckets (e.g: AI, History, …) and an action attached to them: Immediate (tag specific next action - say watch), Reference, Purge.
I should probably try to automate this using an agent, and quickly review and toss out what I don’t need.
The “meta” about this is: do you really want to or can even “catch up” with your inbox? Probably not.
Programming
Ghostty is utter crap for me on macOS. I ran smerge . in a git repo, and smerge would not close no matter what I tried. I think Ghostty kept respawning it again and agin.
AI
Modal.com
Modal is a new AI SaaS that allows you to run serverless AI infra. You write Python code that specifies what kind of OS, LL Model to use, and your custom logic, and mark it to be run “remote”ly, and those parts will run on Modal’s hardware.
This makes the GPUs accessible without buying hardware. The APIs cover a large surface area of GPU related LLM programming. The Featured examples are not only useful to learn Modal, but also various common operations associated with LLMs. Definitely worth looking into deeper.
Aside: I think it should be possible to build an open source version of Modal’s Developer Experience on top of something like unikraft.
Richard Minerich has couple of interesting substack posts about the imapct of AI.
- Ops is going become more important than before now that coding has become cheaper with the help of coding assistants - Ops matters so much more now - by R. T. Minerich
- The value of “generic systems” (that can do more than one thing) is lower than ever because its easier than before to just spin up custom solutions with the help of coding assistants - The Era of Generic Systems is Over - by R. T. Minerich
Geoffrey Huntley’s talk — “The Future Belongs to People Who Do Things” is an interesting recap of recent progress in coding agents, MCP etc. and is turning out to be a good watch for programmers.
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Artificial Writing and Automated Detection | NBER
… it does seem like Pangram can actually detect current generation AI writing quite well with extremely low false positive rates. via X/emollick
Top of the mind
- Taking AI-102 exam on Friday, 9/26.
- Use MeasureUp practice test.
- Starting Math Academy subscription once I finish AI-102 certification.
From around the web
Interesting blog Locklin on science | In which I explain things interesting, remarkable or silly., found via this post on Conformal-Prediction — Predicting with confidence: the best machine learning idea you never heard of.
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On Bullshit essay by Harry Frankfurt. It is also a book
I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis.
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… yet there is no damnation greater than spending our allotted days in the catatonia of comfort and certainty, our inner lives automated by habit and halogen lit by convenience.
A translation of the poem “No Te Salves” by Mario Benedetti
Don’t stand motionless
by the side of the road
don’t petrify your joy
don’t desire with reserve
do not spare yourself now
or ever
do not spare yourself
don’t fill up on tranquility
don’t claim from the world
only a quiet corner
don’t let your eyelids fall
heavy as judgments
don’t remain lipless
don’t fall asleep unready to dream
don’t think yourself bloodless
don’t deem yourself out of time
but if
in spite of it all you can’t help it
and petrify your joy
and desire with reserve
and spare yourself now
and fill up on tranquility
and claim from the world
only a quiet corner
and let your eyelids fall
heavy as judgments
and remain lipless
and fall asleep unready to dream
and think yourself bloodless
and deem yourself out of time
and stand motionless
on the side of the road
and you have been spared
then
do not stay with me.
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The Perks of Living Without Social Media | Cal Newport - YouTube
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Intersting research paper: (Ranganathan et al., 2004) — the way I understand this is, it is possible to squeeze out an extra performance out of you when you absolutely need it. Might be useful for that last push or setting a new personal record ( PR ) when lifting weights. You can will youself to do more than what you are capable of.
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North Karnataka Kannada is its own vibe ಜೀವನದಲ್ಲಿ ತಣ್ಣಗಿರೋದು ಹೇಗೆ? - YouTube. Mahesh mentioned this documentary on D.R. Bendre by Girish Karnad - Da Ra Bendre ದ.ರಾ.ಬೇಂದ್ರೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಕ್ಷ ಚಿತ್ರ - Kannada documentary film - YouTube
NFL
I hardly paid any attention to Colts football in 2023, and 2024. This year started out well with Colts winning their season opener, something they had not done since 2013 or so with thier stop-gap QB - Daniel Jones. The defense and new offensive line, and offensive skill players are looking good. I wish them well!